Compulsory Military Service in Gemany Revisited

This paper estimates the causal impact of compulsory military service on men in Germany using social security and pension administrative data for the cohort of individuals born in the period 1932–1942. Due to the combination of laws restricting conscription only to men born on or after July 1, 1937, diff erence-in-diff erences estimates of the eff ect of conscription on average daily wages can be computed using cohorts of women as a comparison group. The results indicate that conscription had no signifi cant impact on a draftee’s labor-market performance, validating an earlier result using an alternative identifi cation strategy. JEL Classifi cation: J31