Kyle Greenberg, Matthew Gudgeon, Adam Isen, Corbin L. Miller & Richard W. Patterson

This paper estimates causal intergenerational occupation transmission in the military using discontinuities in parents’ eligibility for service from the Armed Forces Qualification Test. A parent’s enlistment in the Army increases their children’s military service propensity by between 58% and 110%. Intergenerational occupational transmission rates vary by race and sex—they are highest for demographic groups whose parents gained the most economically from service and for same-sex parent-child pairs. Our findings provide new evidence on the mechanisms driving intergenerational occupation correlations and show that intergenerational transmission is an important channel for getting under-represented groups into high-quality occupations.