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This Population Bulletin will focus on these issues with regard to the 1.4 million active-duty uniformed personnel currently serving in the four military branches of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and their 1.9 million dependents. This Bulletin addresses core demographic issues regarding the military population. Demography is the study of the size, distribution, and composition of a population.

Though the United States has been down-sizing its military forces since the end of the Cold War, the Army has been called on to fulfill a wider range of missions than in the past. As a result, soldiers and their families are being asked to separate more often. This study compared two PATRIOT missile battalion units deployed to South Korea to perform the same mission. Younger, lower ranking soldiers in both units reported lower family adjustment than older, higher ranking soldiers. Although one unit reported lower family adjustment than the other, several personal and organizational resources were found to alleviate the negative effects of frequent deployments regardless of unit, most notably soldiers' morale, satisfaction with resources to communicate home, and perceptions of leader support. These findings suggest that in an increasingly stressful time for military families, organizational supports are particularly useful in maintaining family well-being.

This article outlines a theory of what affects the degree and nature of women's participation in the armed forces throughout history and across nations. Examining national security situations, military technology, military accession policies, demographic patterns, cultural values regarding gender, and structural patterns of gender roles, the article proposes a systematic theory of the conditions under which women's military roles expand and contract. The theory is then applied to analyze women's likely future role in armed forces. The military's need for personnel has been the driving force behind expansion of women's military roles through history and across nations, but cultural values supporting gender equality also contribute and seem likely to have increased influence in the future.

The social psychological exchange model upon which much of the recent status inconsistency literature is based assumes that individuals will attempt to maximize their social positions by stressing those status dimensions that give them claim to the greatest amount of deference from others. Analysis of data from a national sample of American adults (N=1,571), however, suggests that status incosistent people average their several statuses in defining their social positions, rather than maximizing their claims by disregarding low statuses.

In this paper, we investigate the selective nature of military service, with emphasis on the period following the inception of the all volunteer force (AVF) in 1973. Following an argument made by Mare and Winship (1984), we seek to determine whether young men who voluntarily enlist in the military are positively selected with respect to characteristics valued in the labor market. We are particularly interested in the degree to which such selectivity applies more to blacks than to whites, thus leading to a \"creaming\" of the best young black men. Using background variables closely tied to positive socioeconomic outcomes, our results indicate support for positive selectivity among black men. Among white men, military enlistment is concentrated among men with less privileged backgrounds and qualifications. The pattern for white men becomes less consistent over time, however, and may indicate a tendency toward increased selectivity.

This study uses a large, nationally representative data base to examine the multiple correlates of enlistment of young men in the military. It focuses on the recent experience of the all volunteer force (AVF) and pays particular attention to the effects of work, school, and family roles on enlistment in the military and how these effects vary by race. It is argued that the potential for role incompatibility and conflict between the military and work, school, and family roles reduces the likelihood that men who are employed, in school, married, or fathers will enter the military. The findings show that work and school enrollment significantly reduce the likelihood of enlisting in the military for White men but not for Black men. Marriage and parenthood do not affect the likelihood of military enlistment for either Whites or Blacks.

This article analyzes the effects of organizational support for families on the organizational commitment of male enlisted Army soldiers and their wives. Organizational support is measured as perceptions of the supportiveness of both formal Army level policies and informal unit leader practices towards families. Results of our path analysis indicate that perceptions of the supportiveness of both formal policies and informal practices have significant independent effects on the organizational commitment of soldiers. In addition, perceptions of the supportiveness of unit leader practices have significant effects on the organizational commitment of soldiers' wives. For both soldiers and wives, family support also has significant positive indirect effects on commitment, through reduced Army-family conflict. We suggest specific organizational policies and practices that can increase soldiers' and spouses' commitment to the military through support of families.

This article investigates the impact of military service on the socioeconomic status of African American and white, non-Hispanic women veterans of the post-1973 U.S. allvolunteer force. Earnings and family income are used as measures of socioeconomic status. Data from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample L were used in this analysis. This data set is a .45 percent sample drawn from the 1990 Census. Using semilogarithmic regression, we found that, overall, African American women veterans did not differ significantly from their non-serving counterparts, controlling for several factors associ ated with socioeconomic status. White, non-Hispanic women veterans, however, suffered an earnings and family income penalty relative to similar non-serving women. The data suggest that this veteran disadvantage may be due to the interaction of military service. child-bearing patterns, and educational attainment.

This article uses Public Use Microsample (PUMS) data drawn from the 1990 census to explore the relationship between military presence, defined as the percentage of the local labor force in the active-duty armed forces, and women's employment and earnings across local labor market areas (LMAs) in the United States. Comparisons of local rates of unemployment and mean women's earnings are made between those LMAs in which the military plays a disproportionate role in the local labor market and those in which military presence is low. Results suggest that women who live in labor market areas with a substantial (5 percent or greater) military presence have, on average, lower annual earnings and higher rates of unemployment than their counterparts who live in nonmilitary LMAs. The argument is made that through the interaction of several socially situated conditions-including gender, family, labor markets, human capital, and place-the military emerges as a source of inequality in labor market out-comes for women working on or around military installations.