A large body of literature suggests that the first years of life are critical for long-term economic, health and social outcomes. However, the effect of public programs on early life skills formation is largely unknown due to data limitations. In this paper we use novel data from a large...

We use data from a natural experiment in which retirement benefits were reduced by congressional legislation and later restored to estimate the effect of future retirement benefit eligibility upon the decision of whether to remain in the U.S. military. We find that the generosity of retirement...