On: The Unexotic Underclass (2013)

[icebraining]

1. Service may be voluntary, but it is still mostly the poor, both rural and urban who have few options out of High School.

Is that still true? I thought it had changed post-9/11 (per [1]), has it reverted?

[1] http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/08/who-serves-...

[dforrestwilson1 → icebraining]

That's an interesting point. I had not seen that.

I can't refute this with stats, but I would not say I have seen the same thing either. I would be curious to know if different branches of the military have widely disparate demographics. I suspect the Air Force takes in the most highly educated and also wealthiest recruits, and that the Army takes in the least educated, least wealthy.

In the Marine Corps I saw big differences in backgrounds based upon MOS. My boot camp platoon was roughly 50% Hispanic and most of them ended up 0300 - infantry.

[someguydave → dforrestwilson1]

I remember when the PBS news show would list the causalities in Iraq every evening along with their hometowns. I perceived that most military members who died were from rural areas in the South and Midwest.

[icebraining → someguydave]

Well, not in absolute numbers, at least.

  State	     Fatalities
  California	478
  Texas		420
  Florida	196
  Pennsylvania	196
  New York	191
  Ohio		188
  Illinois	162
  Michigan	160
  Georgia	142
  ...

http://icasualties.org/iraq/uscasualtiesbystate.aspx

[someguydave → icebraining]

Interesting. It would be interesting to see this table normalized by the state's population.