Do Veterans Face Disparities in Larger Education, Overall health, and Housing?

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Dan Garcia, and Maxim Pinkovskiy

Veterans are an understudied group that types an crucial portion of the fabric of American society and that constitutes a substantial segment of the population. In the 1st post of this two-portion series, we will investigate how the outcomes of veteran men–in educational attainment, overall health, and housing–differ from these of comparable males who did not serve in the military. Seeking only at males, for motives described under, we come across that relative to nonveteran males with a higher college degree and a related distribution of demographic and geographic qualities, veterans are 7 percentage points significantly less most likely to have a college degree and are more than 50 % extra most likely to knowledge a disability. Veterans are also somewhat likelier to rent a house than to personal and, as renters, spend a reduce typical rent, suggesting they knowledge reduce high-quality housing or reside in worse neighborhoods.

Service in the military could bring each financial positive aspects and financial disadvantages. It represents a commitment of time away from classroom education or civilian employment for the duration of the incredibly years when several folks start their careers. It also carries with it the threat of injury or serious mental strain. On the other hand, military service could also bring positive aspects, such as possibilities to discover new technical and interpersonal expertise, access to overall health insurance coverage via the Veterans’ Administration, or subsidies to greater education via the G.I. Bill.

The Information Set

We use the 2019 5-year American Neighborhood Survey (ACS), the final one particular just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, to compute typical outcomes for male veterans and nonveterans aged amongst 25 and 69. This reduce of the information has us searching at the population of veterans who served when enlistment in the armed forces was voluntary, immediately after the finish of the draft in 1971. It is a challenge to construct a comparison group given that veterans differ from nonveterans amongst several dimensions. For instance, veterans are overwhelmingly most likely to be male higher college graduates as the military commonly calls for a higher college degree for service. Veterans are older, with enlistment prices drifting down more than time. They are also extra most likely to be native-born and white, and extra most likely to have been born in the South and the Midwest than in the Northeast and the West.

As a result, for a extra comparable group for veterans, we take the population of nonveteran male higher college graduates and weight them to match the age, racial, ethnic, immigrant and geographic distributions of veterans. Following a preceding paper, we use as weights the fractions of the male higher college graduate population in every single age, race, origin, and geography category who are veterans. We will refer to this manage group as “comparable nonveterans” for the rest of the series. Though our methodology does not take away all sources of variations amongst veterans and “reweighted” nonveterans (for instance, the veterans could differ from nonveterans in other elements of their background, or in unobservables such as character or interests, for which there is no information in the ACS), it avoids the most clear sources of noncomparability amongst them and makes it possible for us to concentrate on the consequences of getting a veteran.

Differing Outcomes in Education, Overall health, and Housing

In spite of obtaining access to the positive aspects of the G.I. Bill, veterans are significantly less most likely than comparable nonveterans to pursue additional education immediately after higher college. We see in the chart under that although 34 % of male higher college graduates who are not veterans receive a bachelor’s degree or greater, only 27 percent of veterans do so. Veterans are also significantly less most likely to finish their education with a bachelor’s degree (17 percent vs. 22 percent) and to go on to receive an sophisticated degree (10 percent vs. 12 percent) than nonveterans. These variations could be due to the direct effects of military service (like spending a quantity of essential years for education in the military), as nicely as to unobserved variations amongst veterans and nonveterans that are not captured by their age, ethnic, and geographic background.

Veterans Are Much less Probably to Hold a Bachelor’s or Sophisticated Degree

Sources: American Neighborhood Survey authors’ calculations.

On the overall health front, we see in the panel chart under that although the percentage of veterans that is uninsured is substantially reduce than nonveterans, veterans are more than 50 percent extra most likely to have a disability, with the odds increasing even greater for some particular disabilities. Thanks to getting eligible for further types of overall health insurance coverage, only 6 percent of veterans are uninsured, compared with 11 percent of comparable nonveterans (left panel). On the other hand, regardless of this coverage, the overall health of veterans, at least as measured by the presence of disabilities, is poorer (ideal panel). Veterans are also half once more as most likely to be disabled, with 19 percent of veterans obtaining a disability as opposed to 12 percent of comparable nonveterans. Veterans are extra than twice as most likely to have a hearing disability (7 percent vs. 3 percent) and almost twice as most likely to have a sensory disability (9 percent vs. 5 percent). Provided that folks serving in the armed forces ordinarily have to pass a health-related evaluation, disparities amongst veterans and nonveterans in their disability price most likely emerge either straight from military service or from variations in what veterans and comparable nonveterans do immediately after the veterans leave the military.

Veterans Are Much more Probably to Have Overall health Insurance coverage, But Are Much more Probably to Be Disabled

Sources: American Neighborhood Survey authors’ calculations.

This evaluation also sheds light on the housing circumstance of veterans and nonveterans who either personal or rent. (We do not think about homelessness although veteran homelessness is a essential policy concern, there are possible information gaps given that the ACS methodology of getting respondents most likely undersamples the homeless). In the panel chart under, we see that the renting status of veterans and nonveterans differs small (left panel), standing in contrast to the educational and overall health variations identified above. Veterans are somewhat extra most likely to rent than nonveterans are, but the homeownership price amongst veterans is 70 percent, just one particular percentage point significantly less than that of comparable nonveterans. On the other hand, veterans could be consuming housing of reduce high-quality. Veterans who are renters spend about six % significantly less in rent than comparable nonveteran renters, suggesting that they rent housing with fewer amenities or in worse neighborhoods (ideal panel) the identical observation about housing high-quality could apply to veteran home owners.

Veterans Are Slightly Much more Probably to Rent, and Rent Much less Costly Housing

Sources: American Neighborhood Survey authors’ calculations.

To conclude, we see that, when generating the comparison with nonveterans who are demographically related to veterans, veterans have reduce education attainment and a higher prevalence of disabilities than nonveterans. The information also recommend veterans are in somewhat worse housing conditions. In the second post of this series, we will investigate variations in earnings and labor marketplace outcomes of veterans and nonveterans, and how these variations could be explained by their disparities in terms of education and overall health. Much more broadly, we will continue to track information relevant to financial outcomes by race/ethnicity, gender, revenue, age, veteran status, and geography in a new month-to-month information item, Equitable Development Indicators (EGI). Check out our internet function for charts and short takeaways on disparities in people’s knowledge of inflation, earnings, employment, and customer spending.

Rajashri Chakrabarti is the head of Equitable Development Research in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Study and Statistics Group.  

Dan Garcia is a investigation analyst in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Study and Statistics Group.

Maxim Pinkovskiy is an financial investigation advisor in Equitable Development Research in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Study and Statistics Group.

How to cite this post:
Rajashri Chakrabarti, Dan Garcia, and Maxim Pinkovskiy, “Do Veterans Face Disparities in Larger Education, Overall health, and Housing?,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, May possibly 25, 2023, https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2023/05/do-veterans-face-disparities-in-greater-education-overall health-and-housing/.

Disclaimer
The views expressed in this post are these of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve Program. Any errors or omissions are the duty of the author(s).