We exploit the military mobilization for World War II to investigate the effects of female labor supply on the wage structure. The mobilization drew many women into the workforce permanently. But the impact was not uniform across states. In states with greater mobilization of men, women worked more after the war and in 1950, though not in 1940. These induced shifts in female labor supply lowered female and male wages and increased earnings inequality between high school-and college-educated men. It appears that at midcentury, women were closer substitutes for high school men than for those with lower skills.

The random assignment of cadets to social groups at West Point provides a rare opportunity to highlight potentially misleading estimates of social group effects found in many studies. Estimates of contemporaneous group effects in human capital production are typically positive and significant; however, evidence in this study suggests that occurrences common to a group may account for much of this correlation. Models that address these biases provide little evidence of group effects in academic performance, although there is evidence of group influences in choice outcomes such as the selection of academic major and the decision to remain in the Army. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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parent's Army personnel data, we evaluate the effect of a soldier's deployment on the academic achievement of his or her children. We find that deployments have modest adverse effects across most academic subjects, with lengthy deployments and deployments during the month of testing leading to the largest detrimental effects. Further evidence suggests that the adverse effects in academic achievement may persist for several years.

We exploit the military mobilization for World War II to investigate the effects of female labor supply on the wage structure. The mobilization drew many women into the workforce permanently. But the impact was not uniform across states. In states with greater mobilization of men, women worked more after the war and in 1950, though not in 1940. These induced shifts in female labor supply lowered female and male wages and increased earnings inequality between high school-and college-educated men. It appears that at midcentury, women were closer substitutes for high school men than for those with lower skills.