IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/9se4r.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

War Causes Religiosity: Gravestone Evidence from the Vietnam Draft Lottery

Author

Listed:
  • Mill, Wladislaw
  • Ebert, Tobias
  • Berkessel, Jana
  • Jonsson, Thorsteinn
  • Lehmann, Sune
  • Gebauer, Jochen

Abstract

Does war make people more religious? Answers to this classic question are dominated by the lack of causality. We exploit the Vietnam Draft Lottery -- a natural experiment that drafted male U.S. citizens into military service during the Vietnam War -- to conclusively show that war increases religiosity. We measure religiosity via religious imagery on web-scraped photographs of hundreds of thousands of gravestones of deceased U.S. Americans using a tailor-made convolutional neural network. Our analysis provides compelling and robust evidence that war indeed increases religiosity: people who were randomly drafted into war are at least 20 % more likely to have religious gravestones. This effect sets in almost immediately, persists even after 50 years, and generalizes across space and societal strata.

Suggested Citation

  • Mill, Wladislaw & Ebert, Tobias & Berkessel, Jana & Jonsson, Thorsteinn & Lehmann, Sune & Gebauer, Jochen, 2024. "War Causes Religiosity: Gravestone Evidence from the Vietnam Draft Lottery," SocArXiv 9se4r, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:9se4r
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/9se4r
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/661f971fc053945dd8b4d37d/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/9se4r?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 313-336, June.
    2. Terza, Joseph V. & Basu, Anirban & Rathouz, Paul J., 2008. "Two-stage residual inclusion estimation: Addressing endogeneity in health econometric modeling," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 531-543, May.
    3. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    4. Peter Siminski, 2013. "Employment Effects of Army Service and Veterans' Compensation: Evidence from the Australian Vietnam-Era Conscription Lotteries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(1), pages 87-97, March.
    5. Peter Siminski & Simon Ville, 2011. "Long-Run Mortality Effects of Vietnam-Era Army Service: Evidence from Australia's Conscription Lotteries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 345-349, May.
    6. Chris Rohlfs, 2010. "Does Combat Exposure Make You a More Violent or Criminal Person? Evidence from the Vietnam Draft," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(2).
    7. Sarena Goodman & Adam Isen, 2020. "Un-Fortunate Sons: Effects of the Vietnam Draft Lottery on the Next Generation's Labor Market," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 182-209, January.
    8. Richard W. Blundell & James L. Powell, 2004. "Endogeneity in Semiparametric Binary Response Models," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 655-679.
    9. Anirban Basu & Norma Coe & Cole G. Chapman, 2017. "Comparing 2SLS vs 2SRI for Binary Outcomes and Binary Exposures," NBER Working Papers 23840, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records: Errata," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1284-1286, December.
    11. Imai, Kosuke & Khanna, Kabir, 2016. "Improving Ecological Inference by Predicting Individual Ethnicity from Voter Registration Records," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 263-272, April.
    12. Joshua D. Angrist & Stacey H. Chen, 2011. "Schooling and the Vietnam-Era GI Bill: Evidence from the Draft Lottery," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 96-118, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mill, Wladislaw & Ebert, Tobias & Berkessel, Jana & Jonsson, Thorsteinn & Lehmann, Sune & Gebauer, Jochen, 2024. "War Causes Religiosity: Gravestone Evidence from the Vietnam Draft Lottery," SocArXiv 9se4r_v1, Center for Open Science.
    2. Jason M. Lindo & Charles Stoecker, 2014. "Drawn Into Violence: Evidence On “What Makes A Criminal” From The Vietnam Draft Lotteries," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 239-258, January.
    3. Peter Siminski & Simon Ville & Alexander Paull, 2016. "Does the military turn men into criminals? New evidence from Australia’s conscription lotteries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 29(1), pages 197-218, January.
    4. Manuel Denzer, 2019. "Estimating Causal Effects in Binary Response Models with Binary Endogenous Explanatory Variables - A Comparison of Possible Estimators," Working Papers 1916, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    5. Johnston, David W. & Shields, Michael A. & Siminski, Peter, 2016. "Long-term health effects of Vietnam-era military service: A quasi-experiment using Australian conscription lotteries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 12-26.
    6. Peter Siminski & Simon Ville & Alexander Paull, 2013. "Does the Military Train Men to be Violent Criminals? New Evidence from Australia’s Conscription Lotteries," Economics Working Papers wp13-01, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    7. Kadir Atalay & Garry F. Barrett & Peter Siminski, 2019. "Pension incentives and the joint retirement of couples: evidence from two natural experiments," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 735-767, July.
    8. Peter Siminski & Simon Ville, 2012. "I Was Only Nineteen, 45 Years Ago: What Can we Learn from Australia’s Conscription Lotteries?," Economics Working Papers wp12-06, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    9. Hjalmarsson, Randi & Lindquist, Matthew, 2016. "The Causal Effect of Military Conscription on Crime and the Labor Market," CEPR Discussion Papers 11110, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Eva Deuchert & Martin Huber, 2017. "A Cautionary Tale About Control Variables in IV Estimation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(3), pages 411-425, June.
    11. Xintong Wang & Carlos A. Flores & Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, 2020. "The Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on the Long-Term Health of Veterans: A Bounds Analysis," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 234, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    12. Majbouri, Mahdi, 2017. "Sir! I'd Rather Go to School, Sir!," IZA Discussion Papers 10787, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Simon Ville & Peter Siminski, 2011. "A Fair And Equitable Method Of Recruitment? Conscription By Ballot Into The Australian Army During The Vietnam War," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(3), pages 277-296, November.
    14. Brennan Mange & David C. Phillips, 2016. "Career Interruption and Productivity: Evidence from Major League Baseball during the Vietnam War Era," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(2), pages 159-185.
    15. Jiang, Lingqing & Zhu, Zhen, 2022. "Information exchange and multiple peer groups: A natural experiment in an online community," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 543-562.
    16. Wolfgang Stojetz & Tilman Brück, 2023. "Exposure to collective gender-based violence causes intimate partner violence," HiCN Working Papers 389, Households in Conflict Network.
    17. Patulny, Roger & Siminski, Peter & Mendolia, Silvia, 2015. "The front line of social capital creation – A natural experiment in symbolic interaction," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 8-18.
    18. Bäckström, Peter & Hanes, Niklas, 2023. "The Impact of Peacekeeping on Post-Deployment Earnings for Swedish Veterans," Umeå Economic Studies 1010, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    19. Stojetz, Wolfgang & Brück, Tilman, 2023. "Exposure to collective gender-based violence causes intimate partner violence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    20. Timothy F. Harris & Aaron Yelowitz, 2018. "Life Insurance Holdings And Well‐Being Of Surviving Spouses," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(3), pages 526-538, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • P00 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - General - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:9se4r. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.