Quote:
Originally Posted by magpan
A recruiting demographics report entitled 'Who Serves in the U.S. Military? The Demographics of Enlisted Troops and Officers' can be viewed here. This report was released in August, 2008.
An article from around the same time, located here but quoted (Shanea Watkins, Ph.D. and James Sherk Center for Data Analysis Report #08-05), summarizes the report:
'Conventional wisdom holds that military service disproportionately attracts minorities and men and women from disadvan taged backgrounds. Many believe that troops enlist because they have few options, not because they want to serve their country.
Others believe that the war in Iraq has forced the military to lower its recruiting standards.
Previous Heritage Foundation studies that examined the backgrounds of enlisted personnel refute this interpretation.[1] This report expands on those studies by using an improved methodology to study the demographic characteristics of newly commissioned officers and personnel who enlisted in 2006 and 2007.
Any discussion of troop quality must take place in context. A soldier?s demographic characteristics are of little importance in the military, which val ues honor, leadership, self-sacrifice, courage, and integrity?qualities that cannot be quantified. Nonetheless, any assessment of the quality of recruits can take place only on the basis of objec tive criteria. Demographic characteristics are a poor proxy for the quality of those who serve in the armed forces, but they can help to explain which Americans volunteer for military service and why.
Based on an understanding of the limitations of any objective definition of quality, this report comhapares military volunteers to the civilian population on four demographic characteristics: household income, education level, racial and ethnic back ground, and regional origin. This report finds that:
U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officerswho do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Her itage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demon strates that the same is true of the officer corps.
Members of the all-volunteer military are sig nificantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 per cent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) pro gram, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods?a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted perhasonnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18?24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor?s degree.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of South ern military tradition.
The facts do not support the belief that many American soldiers volunteer because society offers them few other opportunities. The average enlisted person or officer could have had lucrative career opportunities in the private sector. Those who argue that American soldiers risk their lives because they have no other opportunities belittle the personal sacrifices of those who serve out of love for their country.'
@PSSuperstars - I certainly appreciate that you can appreciate (without necessarily having to accept) more sides of an issue. It is refreshing.  |
Just to put the clocks back on time :
Down economy boosts military
WASHINGTON - The faltering US economy is fueling a dramatic turnaround in military recruiting, with new statistics showing that the Army is experiencing the highest rate of new enlistments in six years.
The Army exceeded its goals each month from October through January - the first quarter of the new fiscal year - for both the active-duty Army and the Army Reserve, according to figures compiled by the US Army Recruiting Command.
Officials said it is the first time since the first quarter of fiscal year 2003, before the start of the Iraq War, that the Army has started out its recruiting year on such a high note.
In recent years the Army either missed its initial goals or barely met them, and was forced to accept increasing percentages of recruits who either did not graduate from high school, scored in the lowest category on the armed forces qualification test, or required a waiver for past criminal activity.
....
Military Recruiting Numbers Climb in Weak Economy Armed forces recruiters say people are more willing to listen to the pitch
Washington ? Almost every day another company announces worker layoffs: General Motors, Starbucks, Sprint, Target, Caterpillar and Home Depot in recent weeks, all marching to the drumbeat of shrinking manufacturing and retail sales.
Neither small nor large organizations seem immune to the economic downturn, with one exception: the federal government. And within the government, the U.S. armed forces, in particular, are enjoying a hiring surge. The most recent year (2008) was the strongest military recruiting year in the past four. With the number of unemployed workers hovering around 11 million, all the services met recruiting goals in the initial weeks of 2009.
Each year, the military brings in more than 300,000 new recruits so it can maintain a 2.2 million force of sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines. But while the door to the military is always open, military recruiters are fielding more queries and meeting with a new receptivity from potential candidates.
Recruiters report that they are seeing older walk-ins as a result of a battered economy. Changes in recruitment rules ? the Army, for example, in 2006 raised its enlistment age limit from 35 to 42 ? are also behind interest from older candidates.
With conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army brought in more than 80,000 new recruits in 2008, while the Marines filled 38,000 positions.
It is a
?seller?s market,? according to anecdotal reports from Marine recruiters.
As for your quote from Heritage.org, I hope you realize that it is not the " fair & balanced " source :
A
conservative think tank promoting public policy research and analysis based on free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, ..