I believe the Heritage Foundation study, with their exquisite sense of class, tracks the recruits by zip code and use *just* that to classify them economically. Hard to believe...but remember the source.
The military survey (outsiders don't get to see data) relies on self-surveys by 18 year olds, without trained interviewers, about the income of their parents...which they are expected to report accurately to the same authorities who are in the middle of deciding whether the recruit should be placed in a crummy low status assignment or be among those deserving a more promising opportunity. [A smaller point: one imagines that the military study uses the Census Bureau's CPS as a base comparator for the population at large. At one time this was a legitimate standard, but in the economy of today we know it significantly understates inequality (leaves out realized capital gains, etc) and hence would make the recruits look more like the norm. Using even just the Fed's SCF as a baseline could reverse the conclusion. If one uses the SCF data to take a yet more complete definition of income (per, say, Wolff & Zacharias at Levy.org) or if one uses wealth data then difference will be quite large.]
In the absence of the chance for a serious and verifiable survey, people might do better to turn to micro data. FWIW, my working hypothesis wouldn't be so much that almost all the recruits come from abject "poverty" (although a good dose of that too) but a somewhat larger category of "very seriously stunted future prospects, even declining from that of their working class parents". For the working class youth I speak to, its that prospect of *relative* social decline and threat of future disappointing failure in the eyes of the "community" and family that really scares the more motivated ones towards the military.
Paul
Doug H. writes:
>Heritage did a study in 2005 <http://www.heritage.org/Research/
>NationalSecurity/cda05-08.cfm>, 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 <http://
>www.dod.mil/prhome/poprep98/html/chapter_7.html>:
>
> > 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
>
>