Is There Data on the Economic Background of Our Military?

[stepnw1f]

Such as the proportion of wealthy to poor men and women serving.

[ikojo]

1. There was a recent article in USA Today written by

a couple of Heritage Foundation Fellows that posited the theory that for every poor urban recruit there are two recruits from the upper middle class.

I'd love to see those stats.

I know many people who are of the upper middle class and to a person none of them know anyone of my or the next generation serving in the military.

I was always of the understanding that the higher up the economic ladder one goes the less likely it is that one knows someone who is currently serving in the military.

[Traveling_Home]

2. This??

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-27-soldier-edit_x.htm

[Bozita]

3. This may help ...

Headline article in Sunday's Detroit News:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051...

Uncle Sam lures more from rural Michigan

Money, education attract military recruits who see few opportunities in small towns.

Brad Heath and Norman Sinclair / The Detroit News
November 27, 2005

NORTH BRANCH, Mich.-- The U.S. Marine Corps didn't have to go looking for Steven Letts. He came to them. "I always wanted to be a Marine, ever since I was a little kid," he explained. Plus, signing up means he won't have to pay rent or an insurance bill, and he figures he'll be able to save enough money to open his own auto body shop when he's done. "I have a dream, and I should follow it."

Military records show that Michigan's military recruits come disproportionately from the state's most rural areas, where young people enlist at a rate double that in the most populous parts of the state.

Last year, the slab of land around North Branch sent 30 people into the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy, according to the military records provided by the National Priorities Project, a Massachusetts research group. It got the figures from an anti-war group that requested them from the Pentagon. Their figures did not include Marines, but similar studies that did include them reached the same conclusion.

The records offer the most detailed picture yet of where the United States gets its soldiers, and come at a time when the nation is fighting a war against a stubborn insurgency in Iraq, thousands of soldiers remain in Afghanistan and several branches of the military are struggling to attract enough recruits.
In the state's 45 most rural counties -- those in which at least 60 percent of people live in rural areas -- about seven of every 1,000 young people ages 18-24 enlisted last year. In the state's most populous counties, about four of every 1,000 young adults signed up.

The pattern is similar nationwide.

more...

[stepnw1f]

4. Thank You, Bozita (nt)