Heritage Report Refutes Kerry's Claim

John Kerry’s suggestion that U.S. troops in Iraq are uneducated and not "smart” is directly refuted by a new study from the respected Heritage Foundation.

The report "Who Are the Recruits?” by Tim Kane, Ph.D., issued on October 26, states: "A pillar of conventional wisdom about the U.S. military is that the quality of volunteers has been degraded after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq . . .

"Some insist that minorities and the underprivileged are overrepresented in the military. Others accuse the U.S. Army of accepting unqualified enlistees in a futile attempt to meet its recruiting goals in the midst of an unpopular war.”

The conclusion of the in-depth study by Dr. Kane, Director of the Center for International Trade and Economics at the Heritage Foundation: "The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality.”

# The findings include: The high school graduation rate of 2005 military recruits, 96.72, is higher than the rate for the general population, 79.8 percent.

# The mean reading level of 2004 recruits is a full grade level higher than that of the comparable youth population.

# The percent of recruits who scored in the top percentile of the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, the standardized test administered to determine eligibility for service, rose from 5.63 percent in 2003 to 6.43 percent in 2005.

# In 2004, 92.1 percent of those who became active-duty officers held a baccalaureate degree or higher.

# From 2000 to 2005, between 35 percent and 45 percent of active-duty officers held advanced degrees.

# As for income levels of recruits, the percentage from the poorest U.S. neighborhoods, with one-fifth of the population, declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 13.7 in 2005.

# The median household income of recruits in 2005 was higher than in 1999 and higher than the national median, indicating that more recent recruits "come from even wealthier areas than their peers” who enlisted in 1999, according to the study.

# The percentage of 2005 recruits with household incomes between $52,071 and $200,000, 22.85 percent, is higher than for the U.S. population ages 18 to 24, 20.02 percent.

# African-Americans comprised a smaller percentage of Army recruits in 2005 than their percentage of the overall U.S. population. The same was true for Hispanics.

Dr. Kane concludes: "With regard to income, education, race, and regional background, the all-volunteer force is representative of our nation and meets standards set by Congress and the Department of Defense.

"In contrast to the patronizing slanders of antiwar critics, recruit quality is increasing as the war in Iraq continues.”

For the rest of the story...

Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005
by Tim Kane, Ph.D.
Center for Data Analysis Report #06-09

October 27, 2006

A pillar of conventional wisdom about the U.S. military is that the quality of volunteers has been degraded after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Examples of the voices making this claim range from the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Daily News to Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

Some insist that minorities and the underprivileged are overrepresented in the military. Others accuse the U.S. Army of accepting unqualified enlistees in a futile attempt to meet its recruiting goals in the midst of an unpopular war...

A report published by The Heritage Foundation in November 2005 examined the issue and could not substantiate any degradation in troop quality by comparing military enlistees in 1999 to those in 2003...

The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality.

Quality is a difficult concept to apply to soldiers, or to human beings in any context, and it should be understood here in context...

In the military, it is especially questionable to claim that measurable characteristics accurately reflect what really matters: courage, honor, integrity, loyalty, and leadership.

Those who have been so quick to suggest that today’s wartime recruits represent lesser quality, lower standards, or lower class should be expected make an airtight case. Instead, they have cited selective evidence, which is balanced by a much clearer set of evidence showing improving troop quality.

Indeed, in many criteria, each year shows advancement, not decline, in measurable qualities of new enlistees. For example, it is commonly claimed that the military relies on recruits from poorer neighborhoods because the wealthy will not risk death in war.

This claim has been advanced without any rigorous evidence. Our review of Pentagon enlistee data shows that the only group that is lowering its participation in the military is the poor. The percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004, and 13.7 percent in 2005.

In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) support the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers.

Recruits have a higher percentage of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas. No evidence indicates exploitation of racial minorities (either by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas).

Finally, the distribution of household income of recruits is noticeably higher than that of the entire youth population...

http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm

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