Who Serves?

Who Serves?

This is a discussion we've had here occasionally through the history of the Hall, but I thought you'd like to see the latest figures. The US military continues to draw volunteers who are better educated than average, wealthier than average, and strongly disproportionately Southern:

What you'll see from the graph is that every single region in the nation is underrepresented except for the South, and the Mountain West. The Mountain West pulls 1.07 volunteers for every 1.00 recruit in the military; the South as a whole region, 1.19. The Midwest is close to parity, but just under, at 0.98 per 1.00. The Pacific states are all the way down at 0.88, but the Northeast and New England drag the tail at 0.73.

(The numbers are actually somewhat worse for the North than suggested here, because Maryland and Deleware are included in the "South Atlantic" region with Georgia and the Carolinas. We don't normally think of either as a Southern state. If they were broken out, the South's percentages would rise, and the north's drop yet further.)

All of this just confirms earlier data, but it's interesting to see that the trends hold in spite of a long war.