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Who Will Fight? The All-Volunteer Army after 9/11

Susan Payne Carter; Alexander A. Smith; Carl Wojtaszek

United States Military Academy, West Point, 607 Cullum Road, Lincoln Hall, West Point, NY 10996 (e-mail: )

American Economic Review 2017

Who fought the War on Terror? We find that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan progressed, there was an increase in the fraction of active-duty Army enlistees who were white or from high-income neighborhoods and that these two groups selected combat occupations more often. Among men, we find an increase in deployment and combat injuries for white and Hispanic soldiers relative to black soldiers and for soldiers from high-income neighborhoods relative to those from low-income neighborhoods. This finding suggests that an all-volunteer force does not compel a disproportionate number of non-white and low socio-economic men to fight America's wars.

DOI
10.1257/aer.p20171082
Volume
107 (5)
Pages
415-419
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
Sources
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