School quality and educational attainment: Japanese American internment as a natural experiment

B-Tier
Journal: Explorations in Economic History
Year: 2015
Volume: 57
Issue: C
Pages: 59-78

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 1 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

In 1942, the United States incarcerated all Japanese Americans on the West Coast, including children, in internment camps. Using non-West Coast Japanese Americans and non-Japanese Asians as control groups, I estimate the effect of attending a War Relocation Authority school on educational attainment. Non-linear difference-in-differences estimates suggest that attending school within the internment camps decreased the probability of receiving a post-collegiate education by approximately 4 to 5 percentage points and decreased the probability of receiving a college degree by between 2 and 7 percentage points. I find some evidence that attending a WRA school may have decreased the returns to education as well. By using un-incarcerated birth cohorts and races, placebo tests find no evidence that the identifying assumptions are violated.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:exehis:v:57:y:2015:i:c:p:59-78
Journal Field
Economic History
Author Count
1
Added to Database
2026-01-29