What Affects Decisions to Enlist in the Military?
The period of drawing down the number of U.S. military personnel is over, and military recruiting targets are rising to keep the force from declining further. However, recruiting efforts must compete for resources (dollars for advertising, bonuses, etc.) within a smaller budget than in predrawdown days, and there have been reports that recruiters are having more difficulty in meeting their goals. Models that predict the enlistment probability of persons with different characteristics could help allocate current resources to target the most likely prospects. The most recent individual-level models of enlistment, however, were estimated using data from around 1980. Since then, many trends and events suggest that the enlistment likelihood of different types of individuals may have changed. These trends include an increase in college attendance, shrinking youth cohorts, rising youth aptitudes, and an increase in the number and scope of deployments. To improve the accuracy of recruiting-res
