Laws, educational outcomes, and returns to schooling evidence from the first wave of U.S. state compulsory attendance laws

•The US experienced two waves of state schooling laws: the first focused on children up to age 14 and the second focused on high school.•This paper provides new estimates of the effects of the first wave using the full count 1940 census and a new coding of state compulsory schooling, child labor, and continuation school laws.•IV estimates of returns to schooling for prime age white men range from 0.067 to 0.077.•Quantile IV estimates show the returns were largest for the lowest quantiles, and were generally monotonically decreasing for higher quantiles.•Our findings indicate an important role for the first wave of compulsory schooling laws in increasing both schooling attainment and earnings of the impacted cohorts. The nineteenth and twentieth century saw two waves of state schooling laws. The first wave focused on children to age 14 and the second wave focused on high school. Using the full count 1940 census and a new coding of state laws, this paper provides new estimates of the effects of the first wave of laws. The analysis focuses on cohorts of prime working age between 1910 and 1940. IV estimates of returns to schooling range from 0.067 to 0.077. Quantile IV estimates show the returns were largest for the lowest quantiles, and were generally monotonically decreasing for higher quantiles.