RUI: Determinants and Consequences of Military Service: 1940-1998

Western Washington University, Bellingham WA

Investigators

Abstract

0210185SES-0214296 PI (s) Jay Teachman Lucky Tedrow Western Washington University The military is the single largest employer of young men in the United States, and military recruitment is an often hotly debated topic centering on issues such as access, equality of representation by race and gender, and transferability of training to the civilian labor market. This project examines the determinants and consequences of military service by studying varied interrelationships between military service and numerous life-course outcomes. The PIs will investigate several possible explanations for observed effects of military services. First, men who serve in the military may be a select group who would otherwise be expected to vary in their life-course transitions. Second, military service alters the roles and responsibilities of young men for extended periods of time, often subjecting them to stressful and unfamiliar environments. Such may lead to lasting differences in life-course patterns. Third, military service ma have an impact on subsequent life-course events by interrupting other events in the life course. Three nationally representative databases: The National Longitudinal Study of Mature Men, The National Longitudinal Study of Young Men, and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, will be analyzed. These will allow the investigators to identify differential characteristics of young men, who enter the military, to untangle and model the life course processes by which military service affects subsequent life-course evens, and to determine how these processes might have changed from World War II through the Vietnam era and AVF. The project will contribute to our understanding of the processes by which military service affects the fluid, and often disorderly, life-course experiences of young men.