All Volunteer Force: Outlook for the Eighties and Nineties

摘要

We have analyzed the supply of first-term military manpower from 1960 to 2000. First, we documented changed in the size of the male youth cohort over the next two decades. While the future promises smaller numbers of young men than are currently available, these reduced cohorts are not unprecedented. We tried to evaluate the quality and representativeness of the AVF, and we measured quality using the AFQT scores and high-school graduation status of military recruits. Although we found some sharp year-to-year variations in recruit quality, we found no significant differences in a force manned exclusively versus partially by volunteers. Representativeness is a more difficult problem. While it might appear that a representative military can be produced straightforwardly by conscription, the United States has not been that successful in practice. Finally, we turned to the future costs of the AVF, estimating how smaller youth cohorts will change youth wages. Drawing on established research to develop projections of these wage changes, we find, not surprisingly, that the relative wages of youth can be expected to rise. In summary, considering military demands for youthful males along with their quality, representativeness, and costs, the outlook for the AVF in the 1980s and 1990s is encouraging.