TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lee,Chulhee
TI  - Military Positions and Post-Service Occupational Mobility of Union Army Veterans, 1861-1880
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12416
PY  - 2006
Y2  - August 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12416
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12416.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Chulhee Lee
Department of Economics
Seoul National University
599 Kwanak-ro, Kwanak-gu
Seoul, South Korea
Tel: 310-867-3301
E-Mail: chullee@snu.ac.kr
M3  - presented at "Cohort Studies/Early Indicators Meeting", April 23-24, 2004
AB  - Although the Civil War has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, little is known about how different wartime experiences of soldiers influenced their civilian lives after the war. This paper examines how military rank and duty of Union Army soldiers while in service affected their post-service occupational mobility. Higher ranks and non-infantry duties appear to have provided more opportunities for developing skills, especially those required for white-collar jobs. Among the recruits who were unskilled workers at the time of enlistment, commissioned and non-commissioned officers were much more likely to move up to a white-collar job by 1880. Similarly, unskilled recruits who had served on white-collar military duties were more likely to enter a white-collar occupation by 1880. The higher occupational mobility of higher-ranking soldiers is likely to have resulted from disparate human capital accumulations offered by their military positions rather than from their superior abilities.
ER  -