Sep 23, 2008

Who serves in US Military, the poor or rich?

Thanks to Freakonomics blog, I came across this interesting report, "Who Serves in the US Army?" by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank - not related to the army. One can suspect that their goal is to enhance the army's image against the usual stereotype that most of the army's recruits are poor people with no future prospects. Most of the report focuses on new recruits statistics, especially since 2001.

Below is an interesting graph showing the percentage of recruits from the different income brackets. More interestingly is the lower graph that compares the percentage of recruits to that of the population.

2 comments:

  1. The army hires the poor who usually hope they will get to survive and go to college in return, the politicians send the army to die to ensure the rich become richer.

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  2. It does look like they are trying to enhance the army's image against the usual stereotype.
    Statistics can be easily manipulated and played with to get what you want.

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