Beyond College: Comparing the Earnings Effects of Military Service and Vocational Training

Abstract

This paper uses data from the IPUMS Current Population Survey (2005–2025) to compare the long-term civilian annual income for those who joined the active duty military to those who completed vocational training. Through OLS regressions with demographic and age controls as well as year and state fixed effects, I compared the annual income of those in both of these groups to those who had no additional education beyond a high school diploma/GED but did not join the military. Then I compared the income premiums estimated by the OLS coefficients of veterans to those who went to vocational school. This was done individually for four groups: men aged 25-44, men aged 45-64, women aged 25-44, and women aged 45-64. I found that both military service and vocational training are associated with higher annual earnings than a high-school-only baseline, with veterans generally exhibiting a larger earnings premium over vocational graduates. A lincom test found that veterans outperform vocational training graduates by approximately $900–$1,000 annually for men and $3,500–$3,700 for women. Since the analysis relies on observational data, it is susceptible to selection bias, so the results should not be assumed to be causal, but rather conditional associations.