HUMAN CAPITAL. Ezra, I think that the lower middle class is more or less the correct answer, although I don't have ready statistics on the socioeconomic backgrounds of military personnel, either. The military still provides a ready avenue for upward mobility, which means that people on lower economic rungs will find it correspondingly more attractive. On uneducated recruits, the problem is that being a soldier today is a remarkably complex and demanding job, which is why the military tries so hard to determine the aptitude of recruits beforehand and establishes an educational floor. One of the reasons that military officers are so reluctant to back a draft is that they don't really want to take everyone. Interestingly enough, the Bundeswehr draws precisely the opposite conclusions about the usefulness of a draft, believing that conscription allows the selection of the very best potential soldiers, who can then be offered selective incentives to remain in the military after their service requirement is up. Last observation on the education point; even enlisted personnel tend to be pretty well educated after a couple of years, and officers are among the best educated people in the United States. That all costs a lot of money. One of the reasons that the military has become more casualty conscious (in addition to worrying about the civilian impact of casualty rates) is that the loss of soldiers and Marines represents a very real economic blow.
--Robert Farley
