The Myth of the Underprivileged Soldier

Tim Kane and Jay Carafano, both military veterans, and research fellows at the Heritage Foundation published an editorial in the Sunday November 27th USA Today taking on the myth that military recruiters prey on poor, disadvantaged and under-educated youths in an effort to swell the ranks and meet quotas. Bob Herbert, columnist with the New York Times continually writes, “…likely there would be no war if rich kids had to fight.” Rep Charles Rangel, D-NY even goes so far to call for the draft as some sort of social equality program. The fact of the matter is, “the typical recruit is wealthier, more educated and more rural than the average 18 – 24 year old.” Kane and Carafano found that while rural areas do produce more enlistees, this has always been the case but more to the point 98% of enlistees, “joined with high-school diplomas or better. By comparison, 75% of the general population meets that standard.”

The researchers also found that since 9/11 more volunteers have emerged from the middle and upper classes and fewer from the lowest-income groups. Allegations that recruiters are disproportionately targeting blacks also do not hold water. First, whites make up 77.4% of the nation's population and 75.8% of its military volunteers, Kane and Carafano found. Second, they found that in those areas of the country with the highest concentration of blacks, which range from 24.1% black up to 68.6%, account for 14.6% of the adult population yet only produced 16.6% of recruits in 1999 and only 14.1% in 2003. Those numbers suggest that recruiters are not aggressively targeting black communities but instead they are going after a different demographic altogether.

They end their editorial by saying, “Maintaining the strength and size of our all-volunteer military isn't always easy. But Americans step up when their country needs them. To suggest the system is failing or exploiting citizens is wrong. And to make claims about the nature of U.S. troops to discredit their mission ought to be politically out of bounds.” I couldn’t agree more and I wish the Main Stream Media as well as many members in Congress would realize that they aren’t helping themselves or America with their blatant falsehoods.