Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth Implications for Military Recruitment (2003) / Chapter Skim
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3. Demographic Trends
3. Demographic Trends
Pages 41-69
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From page 41... ...
These numbers are also augmented by immigration of children and teenagers and depleted by mortality and emigration of these groups, but these effects on the youth population are small relative to fertility. Second, trends and levels of differential fertility affect each youth cohorts' average propensity to enlist in the armed forces.
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From page 42... ...
These trends, which correspond to the first two ways in which demographic trends may affect military recruitment, provide a window on the future youth population over the next 15 to 20 years and thus a way of forecasting the size and makeup of the target population for recruitment. Because mortality and emigration rates are very low during the first 20 years of life, we can use recent trends in numbers of births to forecast the size and makeup of the youth population when recent birth cohorts will reach an appropriate age for service in the armed forces.
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From page 43... ...
In this section, we describe recent trends in schooling, work, and enlistment in the armed forces for young persons, focusing primarily on recent high school graduates, typically the target population for armed forces recruitment. Trends in Educational Attainment Perhaps the most dramatic secular trend in the youth population during the 20th century has been the growth in school enrollment and educational attainment, a trend that has continued unabated during the past several decades.
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From page 44... ...
Trends in educational attainment also, to some degree, affect the makeup of armed forces population itself, although trends in educational attainment of the youth population as a whole are not closely mirrored in the enlisted population. Figures 3-3a and 3-3b show trends in the educational makeup of male enlisted members of the armed forces for two age groups, ages 18-24 and 25-29.
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From page 45... ...
Activities of Recent High School Graduates The principal activities of youth are school enrollment and market work. In this section we briefly review trends in enrollment and employment of persons who have recently left high school.
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From page 46... ...
SOURCE: Adapted from unpublished U.S. Department of Defense data.
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From page 47... ...
SOURCE: Adapted from unpublished U.S. Department of Defense data.
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From page 48... ...
Trends in College Enrollment Corresponding to the large increases in educational attainment shown in Figures 3-1 and 3-2 are corresponding increases in rates of college enrollment by recent high school graduates. Figure 3-5 shows college enrollment rates of new high school graduates over the past three decades.
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From page 49... ...
The trend for Hispanic youth is unclear because of considerable sampling variability in the Current Population Survey data for this group. So far as it is possible to tell, Hispanic youth have not experienced the same increases in college enrollment rates that are seen for non-Hispanic whites and blacks.
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From page 50... ...
. NOTE: High school graduates in thousands.
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From page 51... ...
Because all persons who will reach age 18 over the next 18 years have already been born, recent fertility trends provide the core data for future estimates of the size of this population. The Census Bureau routinely calculates projections of the size of the population specific to age, sex, race-ethnicity, and nativity (nativeborn versus foreign-born)
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From page 52... ...
SOURCES: Adapted from October Current Population Surveys (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002b)
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From page 53... ...
We can get some idea of the future trend in the immigrant makeup of children and teenagers from the recent past. Table 3-2 shows the proportions of persons who are foreign born for several recent years by 5-year age groups for persons under age 25.
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From page 54... ...
This conclusion is consistent with Census Bureau projections of the nativity composition of the youth population over the next two decades, which are based on data such as those shown in Table 3-2, plus forecasts of the future streams of immigration and emigration for children and teenagers. Figure 3-10 shows that the percentage of 18-year-olds who are born outside the United States will vary between about 6 and 8 percent between now and 2020 and suggests that, if any change is likely to occur, it will be a reduction in the fraction of young persons who are born outside the United States.
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From page 55... ...
Foreign-born residents are those people born outside the United States to noncitizen parents, while native residents are those people born inside the United States or born abroad to United States citizen parents. One notable difference between the two populations concerns children.
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From page 56... ...
. 100 90 80 70 `u 60 in c' n 50 40 30 20 10 0999 ~ ~3 'A ·~ ~9 Year ~~` ~3 ~~ ~~ ~9 | :::1 other · black ~ white 1~ Hispanic FIGURE 3-11 Projected race-ethnic makeup of the 18-year-old population.
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From page 57... ...
If higher levels of parents' schooling raise the educational aspirations of youths, then trends in parental education may affect young persons' propensities to enlist in the armed forces. Throughout the 20th century, average educational attainment levels increased, a trend that shows no sign of abatement in recent decades.
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From page 58... ...
proportion of persons born between 1980 and 2000 by educational attainment of their mothers. These birth cohorts will reach age 18 between 1998 and 2018.
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From page 59... ...
. That is, parental educational attainments tend to set a "floor" beneath the educational attainments of their children.
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From page 60... ...
Over time, the proportion of children who are raised in families with experience in the armed forces varies considerably, because cohorts of adult Americans have varied in whether they entered adulthood during times of peace or war and during times in which policies of conscription or volunteer forces were in effect. The proportion of a cohort of children who had one or more parents who served in the armed forces is affected primarily by how common military service was when the parents' generation was in its late teens and early twenties, and secondarily by the differential fertility of men and women who served in the military at some point in their lives compared
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From page 61... ...
. NOTE: These estimates are based on birth history data from microdata from the June Current Population Surveys of 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000.
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From page 62... ...
. NOTE: These estimates are based on birth history data from microdata from the June Current Population Surveys of 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000.
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From page 63... ...
to use the estimated coefficients, in combination with the annual series of birth statistics based on the tune Current Population Surveys from 1970 to 2000, to compute the predicted probability of enlistment and total number of enlisters in the armed forces for each birth cohort represented in the tune Current Population Survey. The strength of this procedure is that is it a useful way to combine disparate influences and see their net effects.
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From page 64... ...
Provided that the effects of the demographic characteristics have not changed much over time, however, the secular trend in predicted cohort enlistment rates would not change even were we to 4Father~s educational attainment is not included in the model because it is highly correlated with mothers educational attainment and thus adds little to the predictive power of the model. Region of birth is a dichotomous variable denoting whether or not an individual was born in the South.
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From page 65... ...
adjust the levels of the rates downward to agree with those observed in the 1990s. To see the impact of these effects on overall expected numbers of enlistees, we multiply each predicted probability of enlistment by the size of the 18-year-old population as projected by the Census Bureau.5 These estimates, however, drastically overstate recent and probably future enlistment levels because they are based on a model estimated in an earlier period when enlistment levels were much higher.
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From page 66... ...
Bureau of the Census, 2002a) ; birth records from National Center for Health Statistics nasality statistics microdata files (National Center for Health Statistics, 2002~.
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From page 67... ...
SOURCES Authors' calculations from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (Center for Human Resource Research, 2000~; June Current Population Surveys (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002a)
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From page 68... ...
During the l990s, rates of college enrollment and levels of education completed increased dramatically as a result of three broad trends: (1) secular changes in parental characteristics, especially parents' educational attainment, which increased youths' resources and aspirations for education; (2)
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From page 69... ...
This conclusion refers to the expected impact of demographic trends alone. Thus, demographic trends do not emerge as factors that will contribute to increasing difficulty in meeting enlistment goals.
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