WASHINGTON – As sustained combat in Iraq makes it harder to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force, newly released Pentagon demographic data show that the military is leaning heavily for recruits on economically depressed, rural areas where the need for jobs outweighs the risk of going to war.
More than 44 percent of U.S. military recruits come from rural areas, Pentagon figures show. In contrast, 14 percent come from major cities. Youths living in the most sparsely populated ZIP codes are 22 percent more likely to join the Army, with an opposite trend in cities. Regionally, most enlistees come from the South (40 percent) and West (24 percent).
Many of today’s recruits are financially strapped, with nearly half coming from poor households, according to new Pentagon data based on ZIP codes and census estimates of mean household income. Nearly two-thirds of Army recruits in 2004 came from counties in which median household income was below the U.S. median.
Such patterns are pronounced in such communities as Martinsville, Va., that supply the greatest number of enlistees in proportion to their youth populations. All of the Army’s top 20 counties for recruiting had incomes lower than the national median, 12 had higher poverty rates, and 16 were nonmetropolitan, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group that analyzed 2004 recruiting data by ZIP code.
“A lot of the high recruitment rates are in areas where there is not as much economic opportunity for young people,” said Anita Dancs, research director for the National Priorities Project, based in Northampton, Mass.
Senior Pentagon officials say the war has had a clear impact on recruiting, with a shrinking pool of candidates forcing the military to accept enlistees of lesser quality – and presumably many for whom military service is a choice of last resort. In fiscal 2005, the Army took in its least qualified group of recruits in a decade, as measured by educational level and test results.
Military sociologists believe that greater numbers of young people who would have joined for are being discouraged by the prolonged combat.
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