Military Service and Entry into Marriage: Comparing Service Members to Civilians

摘要

The military offers a springboard to economic stability during a time when it is increasingly difficult for young minority and disadvantaged men to achieve such stability. While enlisting in the armed forces was positively associated with entry into marriage during the first fifteen years of the all-volunteer force, the relationship between military service and entry into marriage among subsequent generations of young adults has been unexplored. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the present study aims to examine the influence of enlistment on entry into marriage for a contemporary cohort of young men. A specific focus is to consider whether the race and social class marriage gap persists between enlistees and civilians. Event-history analyses reveal that young men who served (between 1997 and 2011) were significantly more likely to marry, than their civilian counterparts. Furthermore, there was no difference in the odds of marriage among Black and White men in the military, while some evidence suggests that Hispanic enlistees were more likely to marry than Whites who also enlisted. These findings offer insights into pathways to marriage for social groups who are disadvantaged in the marriage market.