Doug Henwood Talks

On Mar 5, 2007, at 6:14 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:

Doug wrote:

the image of the poverty draft is badly overwrought.

Doug

As far as I can tell the hardest evidence for the argument is based on recruiting practices. American Friends Service Committee has a lot of info on that. For example, they have a map of the New York area with recruiting stations correlated with poverty level:

http://www.afsc.org/nymetro/specialprojects/recruitmentmaps.htm

But that doesn’t really tell us where the recruits come from, just
where the offices are.

Heritage did a study in 2005 , which unlike a lot of their stuff,
seems serious and honest. Here’s the summary:

In summary, we found that, on average, 1999 recruits were more
highly educated than the equivalent general population, more rural
and less urban in origin, and of similar income status. We did not
find evidence of minority racial exploitation (by race or by race- weighted ZIP code areas). We did find evidence of a ‘Southern
military tradition’ in that some states, notably in the South and
West, provide a much higher proportion of enlisted troops by
population.

The household income of recruits generally matches the income
distribution of the American population. There are slightly higher
proportions of recruits from the middle class and slightly lower
proportions from low-income brackets. However, the proportion of
high-income recruits rose to a disproportionately high level after
the war on terrorism began, as did the proportion of highly edu
cated enlistees. All of the demographic evidence that we analyzed
contradicts the pro-draft case. The military itself reports, based on 1999 records :

Many of the assertions about the class composition of the military
have been based on impressions and anecdotes rather than on
empirical data. Analysis of Vietnam era veterans indicated that
individuals of high socioeconomic status comprised about half the
proportion of draftees compared to their representation in the
overall population.(4) Three systematic analyses of the
socioeconomic composition of accessions during the volunteer period
suggest that little has changed with the All Volunteer Force. All
found that members of the military tended to come from backgrounds
that were somewhat lower in socioeconomic status than the U.S.
average, but that the differences between the military and the
comparison groups were relatively modest.(5) These results have
been confirmed in recent editions of this report, which portray a
socioeconomic composition of enlisted accessions similar to the
population as a whole, but with the top quartile of the population
underrepresented.(6) While the socioeconomic status of recruits is
slightly lower than the general population, today’s recruits have
higher levels of education, measured aptitudes, and reading skills
than their civilian counterparts.

Doug

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