Job market paper
“Women's Entry into Nontraditional Occupations: Impacts of the Gender Desegregation of the U.S. Army“ (link)
Occupational sorting by gender is a primary driver of the gender wage gap. This paper examines how an Army recruiting shortfall, combined with gender policy aimed at addressing it, may have reduced occupational sorting by gender in the past. To test this theory, I leverage the gender desegregation of the U.S. Army in 1972, a policy that opened nearly all Army occupations to women to mitigate the recruiting shortfall from the end of the Vietnam War draft. I show that this policy change induced significant post-treatment entry of women into nontraditional civilian occupations, particularly in metropolitan areas more exposed to the Army. Using the share of active-duty service members living in a metropolitan area as a measure of exposure, I find that a one standard deviation increase in exposure led to a 0.9 percentage point increase in women's entry into nontraditional civilian occupations-a 17.3 percent increase from the pretreatment mean. These findings suggest that gender policy changes driven by military recruitment shortfalls can shift entrenched social norms and reduce gender gaps in the civilian labor force today.
Other academic papers
(preliminary; please do not cite or circulate)
“The Impact of Dependency Deferments on Women’s Labor Force Participation: Evidence from WWI”
During U.S. participation in World War I (1917-18), nearly 37 percent of draft registrants were granted dependency deferments by local (county) boards with considerable variation in rates across regions. In an environment of increased demand for workers, I test the hypothesis that these deferments suppress the labor force participation of women who were dependent on draft eligible men. I find that a one percentage point increase in dependency deferments in a county corresponds to a 0.44 percentage point decrease in the labor force participation rate for married women but a 0.86 percentage point increase for single women. The study informs current debates about the potential inclusion of women in registration for the draft and the subsequent implications for labor force dynamics and family welfare.
“The Role of Army Skills in Veteran Occupations: Evidence from Combat Bans on Women”
In 2016, the U.S. Army opened combat occupations to women, raising questions about the broader effects of military service on women's entry into male-dominated civilian occupations. This paper investigates the extent to which training and experience in Army combat occupations influenced women veterans' transition into closely related civilian occupations. Using publicly available data and a difference-in-differences methodology, I estimate the impact of this policy change on the share of women in civilian occupations that share knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) with Army combat occupations. Data were sourced from the IPUMS Current Population Survey, RAND occupation crosswalks, and Defense Manpower Data Center records. Preliminary results suggest that a one-point increase in the share of women in military occupations predicts a 0.24-point increase in the share of women in related civilian occupations. Future research will leverage the novel Veteran Employment Outcomes dataset, which follows Army service members from their first day of service through the first ten years as civilians to further refine these estimates.
Policy papers
RAND Corporation. Research Report. October 2023. (with S. Beaghley, J. W. Paige, D. Stebbins, S. Zelazny, and S. Ryan)
”Geographic Mobility, Gender, and the Future of Work”
IWPR. Research Report. October 2019. (with C. Childers, A. Hegewisch, T. Ahmed)