JULY 2007

The All-Volunteer 

Military:

Issues and 

Performance

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

A

S T U D Y

CBO
Pub. No. 2960
The Congress of the United States O Congressional Budget Office

CBO

The All-Volunteer Military:

Issues and Performance

July 2007

A

STUDY
Notes

In general, the years referred to in this study are federal fiscal years, unless otherwise 

indicated. In the section on the history of conscription, however, the years referred to 

are calendar years.

Numbers in the text and tables may not add up to totals because of rounding.

The cover photo shows marines preparing for a firing drill at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, 

Kaneohe Bay, in 2005. (Photo by Lance Corporal Roger L. Nelson.)
Preface

The U.S. military is currently engaged in its largest and longest operations since the Vietnam War. The deployments associated with those operations have raised concerns about the 

armed forces’ ability to recruit and retain the personnel they need to carry out those missions. 

Some observers have also voiced concern that not all segments of U.S. society are fully participating in the fighting. To increase the size of the military and to ensure that it broadly represents the populace, some people have suggested reinstating a military draft.

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study—prepared at the request of the Chairman of 

the Defense Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations—considers some of 

the arguments made for and against the draft before or since it was replaced by the allvolunteer force (AVF) in 1973. The study also reviews some performance trends of the AVF 

since its inception and discusses possible effects of returning to a draft. In keeping with CBO’s 

mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this study makes no recommendations.

Heidi Golding and Adebayo Adedeji of CBO’s National Security Division wrote the report 

under the supervision of J. Michael Gilmore and Matthew S. Goldberg. Cary Elliott (formerly 

of CBO), Matthew Schmit, Victoria Liu, and Jason Wheelock contributed to the analysis. 

Ralph Smith, Mark Hadley, Arlene Holen, Sarah Jennings, and Donald Marron of CBO 

provided helpful comments, as did Robert L. Goldich and Paul F. Hogan. (The assistance of 

those external reviewers implies no responsibility for the final product, which rests solely with 

CBO.)

Christian Howlett edited the study; Loretta Lettner and Christine Bogusz proofread it. Cindy 

Cleveland produced drafts of the manuscript and the tables. Maureen Costantino prepared 

the report for publication and designed the cover. Lenny Skutnik printed the initial copies, 

Linda Schimmel coordinated the print distribution, and Simone Thomas prepared the electronic version for CBO’s Web site (www.cbo.gov).

Peter R. Orszag

Director

July 2007

Contents

Summary vii

Introduction 1

History of Conscription 2

How Many Were Drafted? 3

Who Was Drafted? 3

The Lifting of the Draft 5

Some Arguments For and Against the Draft and the 

All-Volunteer Force 6

Military Effectiveness 6

The Cost of the Armed Forces and Economic Efficiency 8

Fairness and Sociopolitical Considerations 9

Personnel in Today’s All-Volunteer Military 12

The Cost of the Armed Forces 12

Quality and Effectiveness of the Force 13

Force Composition and Equity 19

Some Implications of Reinstating the Draft 31

Size of the Draft and Effects on Personnel Structure 31

Budgetary Costs and Savings and Levels of Military Pay 34

Effective Time for Draftees to Be Available for Deployment 36

Equity Considerations 36

Tables

1. Scoring Categories for the Armed Forces Qualification Test 15

2. Racial and Ethnic Composition of Active-Duty Military 

Personnel and U.S. Civilians 21

3. Effects of Voluntary and Draft Accessions on Future 

End Strength in the Active Army’s Enlisted Force 33
VI THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figures

1. End Strength of the Active-Duty Military Under the 

Draft and the All-Volunteer Force, 1940 to 2006 2

2. Annual Number of Draftees and the Military’s

Total Accession Requirements, 1940 to 2006 4

3. Percentage of Non-Prior-Service Recruits and 

Young Civilians with High School Diplomas, 

1973 to 2006 14

4. Distribution of AFQT Scores for Non-Prior-Service 

Recruits and Young Civilians Under the Draft and the 

All-Volunteer Force 16

5. Distribution of AFQT Scores for Non-Prior-Service 

Recruits in the All-Volunteer Force, by 

Scoring Category, 1973 to 2006 17

6. Percentage of Non-Prior-Service Recruits Considered 

High Quality by the Military, 1973 to 2006 18

7. Percentage of Black Personnel in the Active 

Enlisted Force, by Service, 1973 to 2006 22

8. Percentage of Hispanic Personnel in the Active

Enlisted Force, by Service, 1973 to 2006 23

9. Racial and Ethnic Representation in Military 

Occupational Specialties, Deployments, and 

Fatalities Among Active-Duty Personnel 25

10. Racial and Ethnic Representation in Deployments and 

Fatalities Among Reserve Personnel 26

11. Changes in the Geographic Representation of 

Recruits Since 1980 28

12. Distribution of Active-Duty Enlisted Personnel, by 

Family Income Prior to Military Service 30
Summary

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 

military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have required 

substantial increases in the number of U.S. service members deployed and the frequency with which units are 

sent overseas. Through December 2006, over 1 million 

active-duty personnel and 400,000 reserve personnel had 

been deployed to those theaters. To maintain the forces 

necessary to conduct those operations, the military must 

be able to recruit significant numbers of volunteers—in 

fiscal year 2006, its target was almost 200,000 active-duty 

recruits. However, all three components of the Army (the 

active Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army 

Reserve) have had trouble achieving their recruiting goals 

in one or more recent years, although they were able to 

meet or nearly meet their targets for 2006. Those deployments and recruiting problems have raised the following 

concerns among decisionmakers, military analysts, and 

other observers:

B That the armed forces will not have enough troops 

available to accomplish their missions, 

B That military personnel and their families are experiencing significant hardships that the rest of the U.S. 

population is not sharing, or 

B That less-affluent people are more likely than other 

groups to serve in those operations. 

Although the Department of Defense (DoD) has stated 

its commitment to maintaining the current all-volunteer 

force (AVF), others have questioned the viability of such 

a force in light of the current strains on the military. 

Some observers have called for reinstituting a military 

draft as a way to alleviate those strains and to spread the 

demands of war more evenly throughout society.

To shed light on the current discussion, this study by the 

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examines various 

issues surrounding the choice between a draft system and 

an all-volunteer force. It describes the history of conscription in the United States and reviews some of the arguments made for and against the draft, either now or since 

the draft was last used, during the Vietnam War. The 

analysis also looks at trends in the AVF since its inception 

in 1973—particularly the quality of recruits and the average experience level and demographic composition of the 

force—to see whether predictions about a volunteer military have proved true.1

 The study concludes by discussing the logistics of implementing a new draft system, the 

potential effects on the structure of the armed forces, and 

other considerations.

Possible Pros and Cons of a Draft and 

Lessons from the All-Volunteer Force

Many of the arguments heard today for or against a draft 

were articulated earlier, especially in the Vietnam era. In 

some people’s view, the most powerful arguments center 

on the roles of the government and the armed forces and 

on the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizens. One of 

the primary rationales for the draft can be put simply: 

Service in defense of the country is a fundamental 

responsibility of citizenship. Citizens enjoy protections 

provided by the government; in turn, the government 

may require them to contribute to those protections. 

That view was articulated by such figures as George 

Washington and justices of the Supreme Court of 1918. 

Others, however, including President Ronald Reagan and 

economist Milton Friedman, have stated that a draft is at 

odds with fundamental democratic or moral principles. 

Some observers have equated it with involuntary 

1. This study focuses on the active component of the military, partly 

because if a draft was reinstated under current law, no one would 

be drafted into the reserves (as was also the case during the Vietnam War). Data describing the draft force before 1973 refer only 

to the active component.
VIII THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

servitude. Those differences of opinion cannot be 

resolved through empirical study of the issue.

Other arguments focus on the potential consequences of 

using a draft or an all-volunteer force to procure military 

personnel. Specifically, observers have expressed concerns 

about the military effectiveness, costs, economic efficiency, and social-justice implications of the two choices. 

Effectiveness of the Armed Forces

The military’s success in completing its missions rests 

partly on its ability to get and keep intelligent, capable 

individuals while maintaining required force levels. 

Research has consistently linked high scores on the 

Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) and length of 

time in the service to better performance of military jobs. 

Whether recruits have earned a high school diploma 

helps predict whether they will complete their initial term 

of enlistment and thus affects the average experience level 

of the force. 

Critics of the AVF have raised questions about the likelihood that the military could attract enough volunteers in 

peacetime and wartime to meet its requirements and 

about the quality of those volunteers. They have argued 

that many people do not want to join the military and 

that the quality of those who did join would be lower 

(because they would have fewer skills valuable in the 

civilian sector) than the quality available through a draft. 

Proponents of the AVF have countered that historically, 

many people have volunteered for military service during 

both peace and war. They argue that others were discouraged from serving during the draft era because military 

compensation was set at below-market levels.

Since the all-volunteer force began, the military has 

sometimes had trouble recruiting and retaining sufficient 

volunteers in peacetime, and their quality has varied. 

However, the AVF has attracted a greater proportion of 

recruits with high school diplomas or with AFQT scores 

at or above the median than in the youth population as a 

whole or than the services obtained through the draft 

during the Vietnam War. In 2006, 91 percent of recruits 

were high school graduates, compared with 80 percent of 

U.S. residents ages 18 to 24. Moreover, 69 percent of 

recruits scored at or above the 50th percentile (relative to 

the overall U.S. youth population) on the qualification 

test. Experience levels in the military have also risen during the years of the AVF, as initial enlistment periods have 

grown longer, on average, and retention rates have 

increased.

Costs and Economic Efficiency

Supporters have argued that a draft force costs less than 

an AVF because the military can pay lower wages when it 

need not try to attract volunteers. The higher personnel 

costs of an AVF, they contend, could crowd out necessary 

long-term defense spending on weapons, infrastructure, 

and other items.

Other observers have argued, however, that the full cost 

of a draft force is higher than the budgetary costs. In 

effect, the draft imposed an in-kind tax on inductees in 

that the compensation they received was lower than market wages and generally lower than what they would have 

required to enlist voluntarily.2 Those costs—as well as 

any expenses incurred from people’s efforts to avoid the 

draft—would have to be added to budgetary costs to calculate the full cost of military personnel under a draft system. According to proponents of the AVF, the full cost is 

greater with a draft than with a volunteer force. AVF supporters have also argued that because military personnel 

appear less expensive in a draft force than their true cost, 

conscripts are substituted for other resources—and thus 

are overused. 

There is evidence that budgetary costs have been higher 

under the AVF than under the Vietnam-era draft system. 

For example, basic pay for less-experienced service members nearly doubled between 1971 (two years before the 

AVF began) and 1975 (two years after), adjusted for 

inflation. A report by the former General Accounting 

Office estimated that the move to an all-volunteer force 

added about $3 billion per year to the military’s costs in 

1974 dollars (more than $10 billion in 2006 dollars), or 

about 11 percent of DoD’s spending on its manpower 

budget accounts in 1974.3 To CBO’s knowledge, no 

studies have retrospectively examined the total economic 

cost of the draft. However, the extra $10 billion paid to 

service members could also be considered a lower-bound 

estimate of the in-kind tax on draftees.

Representativeness of the Military

Partly because combat entails a higher risk of injury and 

death than peacetime military service or most civilian 

2. The same in-kind tax was imposed on people who volunteered for 

a particular branch of the service to avoid being drafted into a 

branch that was more likely to see ground combat.
SUMMARY IX

employment does, the nation has grappled with the issue 

of who should fight its wars. Some people believe that 

the best way to assign that risk to members of society is 

through a draft system, which can compel citizens from 

geographically, racially, and economically diverse backgrounds to serve in the military. Through the years, some 

proponents of the draft have stated that the AVF would 

create inequities because low-income people or racial 

minorities would be more likely to join the armed forces 

than other groups and thus would disproportionately 

bear the risks associated with military service. Supporters 

of the AVF have countered that the higher wages associated with a volunteer force—as well as other factors, such 

as patriotism and a sense of duty—would attract a broad 

set of volunteers. In that view, if concentrations of certain 

economic or racial groups did occur in the military, they 

would result from the free choice of those individuals.

The current all-volunteer force is representative of society 

along many dimensions—although, partly because of the 

unique demands of military service, it is younger than the 

population as a whole and has a smaller proportion of 

women. The typical recruit is about 18 years old, and 

nearly half of the active-duty force is between the ages of 

17 and 24. By comparison, 17- to 24-year-olds make up 

less than one-fifth of civilians of prime working age. 

Women were barred from constituting more than 2 percent of the military until 1967 and continue to be 

excluded from some occupations and assignments. They 

now make up 14 percent of the enlisted force, compared 

with 50 percent civilians ages 17 to 49.

Members of the armed forces are racially and ethnically 

diverse. Black service members represent the largest 

minority group in the military. Although their percentage 

has varied during the years of the AVF, they composed 

13 percent of active-duty enlisted recruits in 2005 and 

19 percent of the entire active-duty enlisted force in 

2006, compared with 14 percent of the 17- to 49-yearold U.S. population.4 Hispanics, by contrast, are less 

than proportionally represented in the military. In 2006, 

they constituted 11 percent of the enlisted force, versus 

14 percent of civilians ages 17 to 49. 

To explore whether those groups bear a disproportionate 

share of combat and fatalities, CBO investigated the 

racial and ethnic makeup of combat occupations in the 

military, of deployments in support of operations in Iraq 

and Afghanistan, and of fatalities associated with those 

operations. CBO found that white service members have 

a higher representation in combat occupations (75 percent) than in the force as a whole (68 percent), whereas 

black service members have a lower representation in 

those occupations (13 percent) than in the overall force 

(19 percent).5

 The racial and ethnic representation of 

personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan was similar 

to that of the overall enlisted force, as of December 2006. 

Data on fatalities indicate that minorities are not being 

killed in those operations at greater rates than their representation in the force. Rather, fatalities of white service 

members have been higher than their representation in 

the force (76 percent of deaths in those two theaters 

through December 2006).

The socioeconomic backgrounds of service members have 

been less well documented than other characteristics 

because data on the household income of recruits before 

they joined the military are sparse. CBO’s review of previous studies and some new tabulations suggest that people 

from all income groups are represented in the armed 

forces.6

 However, CBO’s analysis of data from 2000 indicate that youths from the very highest and lowest income 

families may be somewhat less likely to serve in the 

enlisted ranks than other groups are.

Implementation Issues

The policies used to implement a draft or an all-volunteer 

force largely determine whether either system will provide 

3. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability 

Office), Additional Costs of the All-Volunteer Force, FPCD-78-11 

(February 1978). The way to measure the additional budgetary 

cost attributable to an AVF is subject to debate. At one extreme, 

some analysts might attribute any changes in personnel costs since 

1973 to the AVF because those costs would not have to be paid 

under a system of conscription. At the other extreme, analysts 

might argue that a draft system should pay market wages and that 

the cost of doing so should not be ascribed to the AVF. The General Accounting Office’s study attributed the alignment of military 

pay with market wages to the inception of the AVF.

4. The percentage of black enlisted personnel has consistently been 

higher in the Army than in the other services. In 2006, black soldiers made up 29 percent of the Army’s enlisted force.

5. Both the white and nonwhite proportions in the force may be 

understated by a few percentage points because the race of about 

6 percent of service members is unknown.

6. Those studies all focus on enlisted personnel. None of the studies 

examine the socioeconomic backgrounds of people who join the 

officer corps, apparently because of data limitations.
X THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

well-qualified recruits who are representative of the 

nation’s youth. Those policies include medical, moral, 

and quality standards for new service members and compensation levels for the entire force. Under a draft system, 

the rules guiding who is inducted and how (for example, 

through a random lottery or through local draft boards 

and a system of exemptions) also influence the effectiveness and quality of the force. 

A draft today could—and most likely would—look very 

different from that of the Vietnam era. Under the current 

law governing selective service (the Military Selective Service Act of 1940, as amended), a new draft would be conducted by random lottery, a system that was not adopted 

until later in the Vietnam War. However, a draft would 

have trouble producing a force with the same level of 

experience as a volunteer force. People would probably be 

drafted for a shorter period than the four- to six-year obligation typical in the AVF, and most draftees would be 

likely to leave after their initial obligation. The demographics of a draft force, except for age, might be similar 

to those of the current force, depending on the rules used 

to implement the draft.

To illustrate possible changes in the structure of the 

armed forces, CBO calculated the accessions and continuation rates that would allow the active Army to achieve 

its desired size of 547,400 personnel by 2012 under 

either an all-volunteer force or a mix of volunteers and 

conscripts.7 (That end-strength goal for 2012 was laid 

out in DoD’s 2008 Future Years Defense Program.)8

 The 

Army had 73,400 accessions in 2005 and 80,000 in 

2006. Continuation rates were 82.4 percent for the active 

Army as a whole in 2005 and 84.5 percent in 2006. If 

future continuation rates dropped to a mix of the 2005 

and 2006 levels, the Army would need between 86,000 

and 90,000 volunteers each year to meet its end-strength 

goal. If, at the same time, annual accessions dropped to 

about 74,000 (roughly the 2005 level), the Army would 

fall almost 50,000 people short of its end-strength objective in 2012. It could meet that goal by drafting up to 

27,000 recruits per year to supplement the 74,000 volunteers. However, that approach would require 14,000 

more annual accessions than under an AVF and would 

reduce the average experience level of the force. Further 

reductions in volunteers—and consequently a greater 

reliance on draftees—would increase the total number of 

accessions required each year and decrease the average 

length of service.

Depending on how a draft was implemented, it could 

either allow or require other changes in the way the military operates. One example is the length of deployments. 

If all of the Army’s combat occupations were at least 

partly filled with draftees serving two-year tours of duty 

(the obligation specified in the Military Selective Service 

Act), some of those inductees would be available only for 

deployments of less than a year because their training 

time would exceed 12 months, CBO estimates. That 

would exacerbate problems for the Army, which recently 

lengthened the typical deployment from 12 months to 

15 months. The Army would have to either permit 

shorter deployments or reduce the training time in those 

occupations. Implementing a draft might allow for more 

flexibility in compensation, however. Because the draft 

would be compulsory, DoD might be able to reduce its 

budgetary costs by paying less, at least to first-term personnel. Finally, the percentage of women in the force 

might change under a draft. As currently written, the 

Military Selective Service Act excludes women from 

being drafted, although they could continue to volunteer. 

If lawmakers wanted a new draft to cover women as well 

as men, they would have to amend that law.

7. Accessions are recruits who sign contracts with the military and 

report to basic training. Continuation rates measure the proportion of service members who remain in the military over a specific 

period regardless of the expiration of their contracts. For details 

of the methodology that CBO used, see Congressional Budget 

Office, Recruiting, Retention, and Future Levels of Military Personnel (October 2006).

8. End strength is the number of personnel on active duty on the last 

day of the fiscal year.
The All-Volunteer Military:

Issues and Performance

Introduction

With the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 

number of U.S. military personnel deployed overseas has 

risen substantially in recent years. More than 1 million 

active-duty personnel had been sent to those theaters 

through December 2006, with the bulk coming from the 

Army and Marine Corps. More than half of the current 

Army has deployed in support of those operations at least 

once, and 15 percent has deployed to those theaters twice 

or more. Combat tours in the Army, which had typically 

lasted for one year for those missions, were recently 

extended to 15 months.1

In addition to active-duty troops, reserve personnel have 

been mobilized in large numbers—a total of 580,000 

reservists had been mobilized through March 2007. Of 

those, more than 410,000 reservists had deployed to 

combat operations through December 2006. Before the 

first Gulf War in the early 1990s, reservists spent an average of one day per year on active duty in support of exercises and operations.2 In the years before the terrorist 

attacks of September 11, 2001, that measure rose to 

about 14 days; since 2003, it has grown to more than 

70 days per year, on average.

The services’ ability to maintain their force levels in combat operations depends partly on their success in attracting volunteers. In fiscal year 2006, the active components 

of the military anticipated a need for almost 200,000 

recruits. Although the active Army was able to achieve its 

recruiting goal in 2006, and the Army National Guard 

and Reserve came within 3 percent of their combined 

goal, all three components of the Army have had trouble 

meeting their recruiting targets in one or more recent 

years.3

 Several factors have apparently contributed to 

those difficulties: the number of active Army and Army 

Reserve recruiters fell in 2003 and most of 2004, with 

only a partial improvement in 2005; recruiting goals in 

the active Army and National Guard were raised in 2005 

to the highest levels of the decade; potential recruits’ civilian opportunities improved as the unemployment rate fell 

from its most recent peak; and the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have increased service members’ risk of 

injury and death. 

Recruiting problems contributed to a 3 percent decline in 

the total number of Army personnel in 2005, despite the 

continuing need for service members in theaters of combat. Army recruiting recovered in 2006 as the service’s 

various components either met or approached their 

numerical goals, but partly because some aspects of minimum entry qualifications for recruits were lowered. (The 

Marine Corps, by contrast, has met its recruiting targets 

and kept its number of personnel at or above authorized 

levels every year in this decade.)

The prolonged combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with difficulties in Army recruiting, has raised concerns among decisionmakers, military analysts, and others that not enough troops will be available to accomplish 

the military’s missions; that service members and their 

families are experiencing continued, significant hardships 

not shared by the rest of the U.S. population; and that 

less-affluent people are more likely to be serving in those 

1. Combat tours in the Marine Corps for those missions usually last operations than other groups are.

for seven months.

2. That measure does not include days spent on active duty for training exercises or drilling. 

3. See Congressional Budget Office, Recruiting, Retention, and Future 

Levels of Military Personnel (October 2006).
2 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 1.

End Strength of the Active-Duty Military Under the Draft and the 

All-Volunteer Force, 1940 to 2006

(Millions of personnel)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), National 

Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2007 (March 2006), available at www.dod.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2007/fy2007_greenbook.

pdf; and Department of Defense, Statistical Information Analysis Division, “Military Personnel Statistics,” available at http://

siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/Miltop.htm.

Note: End strength is the number of personnel on active duty on the last day of the fiscal year.

a. Authority for the draft expired in 1947 but was reinstated the following year.

The military has stated its commitment to maintaining 

the all-volunteer force (AVF), which was reinstated in 

1973. But some people have questioned the viability of a 

volunteer force in light of the problems facing the military. Others have called for bringing back a military draft 

as a way to ease the strains on the armed forces and to 

spread the demands of war more evenly throughout 

society.

This study reviews the history of U.S. military drafts and 

describes the main arguments about the draft made today 

or since the Vietnam era. The analysis also looks at trends 

in the quality, composition, and cost of the AVF since 

1973 to assess whether experience bears out the predictions made for a volunteer force. Finally, the study discusses the logistics of reinstating a draft, the potential 

impact on the structure of the armed forces, and other 

considerations.

History of Conscription

For most of its history, the United States has maintained 

an all-volunteer military.4

 At times, however—mainly 

during conflicts that required large numbers of people to 

fight—the nation has relied on a draft to provide soldiers. 

Men were conscripted during the Revolutionary War (for 

state militias), the Civil War (on both the Union and 

Confederate sides), World Wars I and II, the Korean 

War, and the Vietnam War. 

Drafts have also existed in the United States during 

peacetime. The first was enacted in late 1940 after Germany invaded France and the Low Countries. The draft 

continued after World War II until the Korean War, with 

1940 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Draft Force a All-Volunteer Force

4. The information in this section comes mainly from Richard V.L. 

Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, R-1450-

ARPA (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1977); George 

Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press 

of Kansas, 1993); Gus Lee and Geoffrey Parker, Ending the 

Draft—The Story of the All Volunteer Force (Alexandria, Va.: 

Human Resources Research Organization, April 1977); President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, Report of 

the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, Chapter 13 (February 1970); and Bernard Rostker, I Want You! The 

Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND 

Corporation, 2006). 
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 3

a one-year interruption.5 The longest peacetime draft, 

however, was the one between the Korean and Vietnam 

Wars, when the threat from the Soviet Union prompted 

the United States to raise the largest peacetime force in its 

history. During that period, 1953 to 1964, total end 

strength in the military averaged 2.8 million officers and 

enlisted personnel (see Figure 1). That force was roughly 

10 times the average size of the military in the 1920s and 

1930s and about twice the size of the current force.6

How Many Were Drafted?

Even when drafts existed, the U.S. military relied on a 

mix of conscripts and volunteers. Most men in the Civil 

War, for example, volunteered for service. Of the 2 million to 3 million men who were called to serve or did 

serve in the Union Army, only about 50,000 were conscripts. In World War I, by contrast, about 30 percent of 

U.S. service members were volunteers; the rest were 

drafted. (Voluntary enlistments were halted in 1917 “so 

as not to disrupt the orderly flow of individuals through 

the draft system.”)7

 That draft, though large, was by no 

means universal: The 2.8 million draftees in World War I 

represented slightly more than 10 percent of the pool of 

men ages 18 to 45 who had registered for the draft. In 

World War II, two-thirds of U.S. forces were draftees. 

They totaled about 10.1 million of the 45 million men 

registered.8 (In December 1942, voluntary enlistments 

were largely stopped again.)

Numbers of draftees were much smaller in later conflicts. 

About 1.5 million men were drafted between June 1950 

and July 1953 for the Korean War, and 1.9 million were 

drafted between August 1964 and March 1973 for the 

Vietnam War.9

Draftees also made up a smaller percentage of the total 

number of enlisted recruits required by the military during that period. Draftees filled roughly half of the services’ accession requirements during the Korean War, but 

at the peak of the Vietnam-era draft (1966 through 

1969), they accounted for less than half of enlisted 

recruits without prior service (see Figure 2).10 Although 

military pay for new recruits in the Vietnam era was 

much lower than what most of them could have earned 

elsewhere, on average, between 40 percent and 60 percent 

of volunteer accessions during that period are thought to 

have been true volunteers. Determining the exact number 

of volunteers in the military during the Vietnam era is 

difficult, but the President’s Commission on an AllVolunteer Armed Force estimated that almost 40 percent 

of first-term personnel (about 800,000) and all career 

personnel (another 1.3 million enlisted personnel and 

officers) were true volunteers in 1967. Those figures suggest that more than 60 percent of the overall force consisted of true volunteers. The other volunteer accessions 

during that period were believed to be people who 

enlisted to avoid being drafted.11

Who Was Drafted?

The existence of a draft did not guarantee that all young 

men had the same likelihood of serving. For instance, 

during the Civil War, people in Union states could hire 

other individuals to take their place in the militia or 

could pay a fine (known as a commutation fee) to avoid

5. That interruption occurred when the draft was allowed to expire 

in 1947 but was reinstated in 1948.

6. This study focuses on the active components of the military. If a 

draft was reinstated under current law, no one would be drafted 

into the reserves; likewise, in the most recent draft (during the 

Vietnam War), young men were inducted only into the active 

forces. At that time, the reserves were composed of true volunteers 

and people who enlisted to avoid combat in Vietnam. (President 

Lyndon Johnson explicitly stated in mid-1965 that he would not 

mobilize the reserve components for the war, and in the succeeding months and years, it became apparent that no such activation 

would take place.) Data describing the draft force prior to the 

beginning of the AVF refer only to the active components.

7. Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, p. 51.

8. See Selective Service System, “History and Records: Induction 

Statistics” (May 27, 2003), available at www.sss.gov/induct.htm.

9. Because neither the President nor the Congress declared the Vietnam War, people sometimes peg the start of that conflict to different dates. CBO considers the start to be in 1964, after the 

Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that allowed the 

President “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed 

force” to prevent further attacks against the United States. That 

determination is consistent with certain policies followed by the 

Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. 

Some people, however, consider 1965, when large numbers of 

combat forces were deployed to Vietnam, to mark the beginning 

of the war. CBO pegged the end date to the withdrawal of the last 

U.S. troops from Vietnam.

10. Accessions are recruits who sign contracts with the military and 

report to basic training.

11. Men who enlisted voluntarily in any of the services could not be 

drafted. Although those enlistees had to serve longer than the two 

years that draftees were obligated for, they could choose a branch 

of the service that was unlikely to involve ground combat. 
4 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 2.

Annual Number of Draftees and the Military’s Total Accession Requirements, 

1940 to 2006

(Millions of personnel)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on Selective Service System, “History and Records: Induction Statistics” (May 27, 2003), available at www.sss.gov/induct.htm; and Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, 

Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005 (2007), Table D-1, available at www.humrro.org/poprep/

poprep05.

Note: The number of personnel drafted annually was smaller during World War I than during World War II: 0.5 million in 1917 and 

2.3 million in 1918. 

a. Authority for the draft expired in 1947 but was reinstated the following year.

b. The Department of Defense’s estimate of how many accessions (recruits who sign contracts with the military and report to basic training) 

are necessary in a given year to maintain specific force levels. The requirements shown here are for enlisted recruits without prior service.

service. By the end of the Civil War, almost 120,000 of 

the soldiers who had served in the Union Army were substitutes for draftees. Another 87,000 people avoided service by paying the commutation fee of $300 (an amount 

equal to more than half of the average annual family 

income at the time). Perceptions of unfairness about that 

system led to criticism, protests, and violence, culminating in four days of draft riots in New York City in 1863, 

which required 10,000 troops to restore order.

Selection policies in World War I eliminated some of the 

perceived inequities of the Civil War era. The practices of 

hiring substitutes and paying commutation fees were 

abolished. Nevertheless, lower-income and minority men 

may still have been drafted disproportionately. Upon registering for the draft, people were placed into one of five 

categories on the basis of their industrial importance. 

Those in Class I were considered the primary “reservoir 

of manpower, the drain of which for military duty would 

least disturb domestic and economic life of the nation,” 

whereas men classified in the other groups were “deferred 

as long as possible.”12 Black men were more likely than 

white men to be categorized as Class I and, given that status, had a higher probability of being drafted. Although 

black men made up slightly less than 10 percent of registrants, they constituted more than 13 percent of draftees. 

The draft lapsed after World War I and was not reinstated 

until shortly before the United States entered World War 

II. At the time, the public was split on whether to resume 

the draft. Some opponents argued that draftees were 

more likely to be men who were jobless or poorly paid. It 

is not clear that the prediction held true, however. Draft 

deferments were more limited during World War II than 

they had been earlier. Occupational deferments were 

1940 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

Draft Force a All-Volunteer Force

Number of

Draftees

Accession

Requirementsb

0

12. President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, Studies 

Prepared for the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed 

Force, vol. 2 (November 1970), p. III-1–23.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 5

permitted only for government officials and people in 

jobs considered necessary for the public health or for 

industrial needs. College students could defer their service only until the end of the academic year. 

In the decades after World War II, annual draft inductions dropped from about 250,000 in 1954 to a low of 

about 80,000 in 1962. At the same time, the number of 

men who were potentially eligible for the draft increased. 

In the seven years from 1958 to 1964, the U.S. male population between the ages of 19 and 25 grew by 50 percent 

(from 8 million to about 12 million). With a larger pool 

of potential draftees and smaller draft calls, the proportion of young men who were called to serve decreased. 

(As the population growth continued, some researchers 

projected in 1970 that by 1974, the percentage of 26-

year-old men who had served or were serving in the military could drop as low as 34 percent, compared with 

about 70 percent in 1958.)13

With the number of military personnel needed declining 

as a fraction of the eligible population, questions arose in 

the early 1960s about who should serve or whether the 

draft should be abolished. Disqualification for health reasons and for poor performance on entry tests continued, 

and the system of deferments was expanded. For example, in 1963, deferments were extended to fathers. By 

1964, almost 30 percent of draft registrants received 

occupational, educational, or other deferments, up from 

just 13 percent in 1958.14

As the Vietnam War escalated in the mid- and late 1960s, 

the number of young men who were drafted grew, and 

opposition to the war and the draft intensified. Concerns 

about who was called to serve and about the fairness of 

deferments and exemptions increased. In a 1966 poll, for 

instance, fewer than half of respondents said the draft was 

handled fairly in their community.15 Deferments were 

available for those who could afford higher education. By 

1970, about 10 percent of registrants (or 2.3 million 

people) had educational deferments, more than 10 times 

the percentage in 1960. Because poor or minority men 

may have had less access to higher education than their 

peers, they appeared more vulnerable to being drafted. 

However, those men may have been less likely to meet the 

Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) entrance standards and 

thus less likely to be drafted.16

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson formed the National 

Advisory Commission on Selective Service to consider 

the functioning of the Selective Service System (which 

administered the draft) and alternative systems of 

national service in light of military requirements, fairness, 

and other factors. The commission issued a report the 

following year rejecting an all-volunteer force, recommending that future drafts take place by lottery, and suggesting other changes to the Selective Service System.17

In his campaign for the presidency in 1968, Richard 

Nixon pledged to abolish the draft. After his election, the 

Congress and the President began modifying the draft 

system. In 1969, legislation was enacted to permit a draft 

lottery, and in December of that year, the first draft lottery was conducted—ending the system in which local 

draft boards had solely determined, on basis of the draft 

law, who must report for possible induction in the military.18 In the early 1970s, occupational, agricultural, 

new-paternity, and new-student deferments were largely 

eliminated.

The Lifting of the Draft

Besides altering the draft system, President Nixon chartered the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer 

Armed Force (also known as the Gates Commission for 

its chairman, former Secretary of Defense Thomas 

Gates). The commission was charged with developing a 

comprehensive plan for eliminating conscription and 

13. That 1970 estimate, presented in Studies Prepared for the President’s 

Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, vol. 2, p. III-1–2, 

assumed a military with 2.7 million service members in 1974; the 

actual number of personnel that year was roughly 2.2 million.

14. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 

Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (September 1975), p. 28.

15. Nevertheless, 62 percent of respondents to a 1969 poll thought 

the draft should be continued even if the war ended, and only 

32 percent thought the military should be an all-volunteer force.

16. Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed 

Force, p. 147. 

17. National Advisory Commission on Selective Service, In Pursuit of 

Equity: Who Serves When Not All Serve? (February 1967).

18. In the draft lottery, a container was filled with 366 birth dates, 

and the order in which each date was drawn determined the order 

in which men were called to report for induction. The first date 

drawn was September 14, so all registrants born on that date were 

assigned a lottery number of 1. The lottery continued until all 

birth dates were drawn. Men who had the lowest numbers (and 

who were classified as available for military service) were ordered 

to report for possible induction. 
6 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

with studying the costs and savings of an all-volunteer 

force. It was also ordered to examine options to increase 

the supply of military personnel, including any changes 

in compensation that might be necessary if an AVF was 

adopted. Although some commissioners reportedly 

favored the draft initially, in 1970 the commission published a report unanimously recommending that the 

nation return to an AVF, coupled with a standby draft 

that could be put into effect when additional personnel 

were needed. The report stated:

However necessary conscription may have been 

in World War II, it has revealed many disadvantages in the past generation. It has been a costly, 

inequitable, and divisive procedure for recruiting men for the armed forces. It has imposed 

heavy burdens on a small minority of young 

men while easing slightly the tax burden on the 

rest of us. . . . These costs of conscription would 

have to be borne if they were a necessary price 

for defending our peace and security. They are 

intolerable when there is an alternative consistent with our basic national values.19

In December 1972, the Selective Service System held its 

final lottery identifying inductees for the armed forces; 

on July 1, 1973, legal authority to draft people into the 

military expired. The requirement that young men register with the Selective Service System was dropped in 

1975. However, that requirement was reinstated in 1980 

(after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) and remains in 

effect today.20

Some Arguments For and Against the 

Draft and the All-Volunteer Force

The question of whether a draft would be more desirable 

than an all-volunteer force has reemerged as operations in 

Iraq and Afghanistan continue to require substantial 

numbers of military personnel. Among other arguments, 

supporters of conscription say that a draft would allow 

the military to call up large numbers of people quickly. 

For their part, supporters of the all-volunteer force 

maintain that the quality of the military would deteriorate under a draft.

The last time debate about the desirability of the draft 

was prominent and protracted was during the Vietnam 

War. Some of the arguments made at that time are similar 

to ones heard today. This section summarizes the major 

issues articulated by proponents or opponents of the draft 

then or more recently.21 Those issues fall into three main 

areas: the military’s ability to achieve its goals for size and 

quality, the overall cost of the armed forces, and fairness 

and sociopolitical considerations. (The next section sheds 

light on some of those arguments by examining the characteristics of the AVF over the past three decades.)

Military Effectiveness

The armed services’ ability to function effectively 

depends on many factors. Some critical ones are whether 

the services can enlist enough personnel at the right times 

and whether those personnel will be able to perform their 

jobs efficiently.

Achieving Force Levels in Peacetime and Wartime. Proponents of the draft have claimed that in the event of 

another major national crisis, the all-volunteer force 

19. Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed 

Force, pp. 9–10.

20. Registration is mandatory not only for U.S. citizens but also for 

dual nationals of the United States and other countries and for 

some noncitizens, such as legal permanent residents and refugees.

21. Many other assertions have been made about both systems of procuring military personnel that CBO did not have room to include 

here. These references provide further detail: National Advisory 

Commission on Selective Service, In Pursuit of Equity; Richard 

Nixon, “The All-Volunteer Armed Force,” a radio address given 

on October 17, 1968, reprinted in John Whiteclay Chambers II,

Draftees or Volunteers (New York: Garland Publishing, 1975); 

Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed 

Force; National Council to Repeal the Draft, “An All-Volunteer 

‘Professional’ Army?” in Chambers, Draftees or Volunteers; Joseph 

Califano, “Doubts About an All-Volunteer Force,” in Martin 

Anderson, ed., The Military Draft (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1982); John G. Kester, “The Reasons to Draft,” in 

William Bowman, Roger Little, and G. Thomas Sicilia, eds., The 

All-Volunteer Force After a Decade (Washington, D.C.: PergamonBrassey’s, 1986); The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, “Debating the 

Draft,” broadcast on April 8, 1999, available at www.pbs.org/

newshour/bb/europe/jan-june99/service_4-8.html; Charles 

Moskos and Paul Glastris, “Now Do You Believe We Need a 

Draft?” Washington Monthly (November 2001); Center for 

American Progress, “The Draft: Inevitable, Avoidable, or Preferable?” C-SPAN broadcast on March 30, 2005, available at www. 

americanprogress.org/events/2005/3/b593305ct719947.html; 

and John T. Warner and Sebastian Negrusa, “The Economic Case 

for All-Volunteer Forces,” in Curtis L. Gilroy and Cindy Williams, eds., Service to Country: Personnel Policy and the Transformation of Western Militaries (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006).
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 7

would not be able to meet a large, sudden need for 

additional troops. More basically, draft supporters have 

questioned whether young people will continue to join 

the military given the likelihood that they may be 

required to deploy and fight.22 (In a 2005 DoD survey 

of parents and other adults who influence young people’s 

decisions, a majority said they were less likely to recommend military service because of the war in Iraq.) In 

addition, some people have expressed fears that the current system of using the reserves and a standby draft for 

national emergencies is unlikely to supply adequately 

manned or equipped forces in a timely manner.23

Today, the size of the force depends on the military’s ability to recruit and retain volunteers. Responding to arguments that personnel levels may become inadequate 

under the AVF, supporters of the current system have 

noted that a host of factors affect the services’ recruiting 

and retention efforts, including the missions that the military undertakes, the length of deployments, and compensation levels. In that view, adequate compensation 

should allow the services to maintain the forces they 

need; the reliance on draftees during the Vietnam War 

may be partly attributable to wages that were kept artificially low. The Gates Commission concluded that the 

nation could support the force size it needed with volunteers if regular military compensation for personnel in 

their first term was raised to levels roughly competitive 

with those individuals’ opportunities in the civilian sector.24 In dismissing concerns about the services’ ability to 

maintain an adequately sized force, proponents of the 

AVF have also argued that people tend to volunteer when 

foreign threats emerge

Finally, supporters of the all-volunteer force assert that 

relying on active-duty and reserve personnel can get 

troops to a theater faster than a draft could. A draftee 

with no prior military service could require several 

months to be trained, equipped, and declared ready to 

deploy to a theater. 

Quality and Effectiveness of the Force. Many studies have 

linked educational attainment (specifically, earning a high 

school diploma), high test scores on military entrance 

exams, and more experience or seniority of service members with positive military outcomes. People with those 

characteristics have higher productivity than other service 

members or are more likely to remain in the military. 

Some observers have argued, however, that individuals of 

relatively high ability, education, and social status do not 

normally volunteer for military service because they typically have good employment prospects in the civilian 

economy. Drafting those individuals would allow the 

military to benefit from their talents. By extension, 

that line of reasoning implies that the quality of an allvolunteer force will be lower than that of a draft force 

because military service is presumably more attractive to 

people with fewer civilian opportunities—the poor, the 

less educated, and the less skilled. In that view, the perceived low quality of the force diminishes the prestige of 

the military and thereby makes attracting volunteers even 

more difficult, leading to further declines in the quality, 

and ultimately the readiness, of the force. 

Proponents of the AVF have asserted that if the quality of 

volunteers proved to be too low, the military could target 

its recruiting and compensation policies toward particular 

segments of the population. For instance, adequate compensation, opportunities for career advancement, and 

other selective incentives could help the services recruit 

and retain highly qualified individuals.25

Supporters of the AVF have also argued that the prestige 

of military service is enhanced by relying solely on people 

who freely choose to serve. In addition, a volunteer force 

has the advantage of not including unwilling and inexperienced draftees who may be prone to discipline problems 

22. As attorney and former DoD official John G. Kester put it, 

“Nobody, not even economists, expects that money will attract 

many recruits to enlist when they are confident that if they do, in 

a few weeks they will be shot at.” See Kester, “The Reasons to 

Draft,” p. 292. 

23. If a draft was reinstated under the current rules, for instance, the 

Selective Service System would have 193 days (more than six 

months) after commencing operations before it had to deliver 

registrants to DoD. 

24. Regular military compensation consists of basic pay, cash allowances for housing and food, and the tax advantage that service 

members receive because those allowances are not subject to federal income taxes. Currently, DoD’s goal is to have regular military 

compensation for enlisted personnel at least equal the 70th percentile of earnings for civilians of comparable age, education, and 

experience. Enlistment or reenlistment bonuses are also offered for 

certain occupations or skills as DoD deems necessary. For more 

information about military pay, see Congressional Budget Office, 

Evaluating Military Compensation (June 2007).

25. DoD’s current personnel policies reflect those goals, as discussed 

below.
8 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

(as occurred during the Vietnam era). Thus, a volunteer 

military should be more professional and more motivated 

than a force of draftees.

Another key argument is that turnover among enlisted 

personnel should be lower in a volunteer military than 

under a draft—resulting in longer careers and moreexperienced personnel—for several reasons. First, initial 

enlistments in the present AVF are typically for four to six 

years, compared with the two-year tours that draftees 

would have to serve under current law (and that they 

served during the Vietnam War). Second, true volunteers 

have historically had much higher reenlistment rates than 

either draftees or people who volunteer to avoid being 

drafted. Third, the higher pay and morale in a volunteer 

force should further reduce turnover. Overall, because 

more-experienced personnel receive a greater amount of 

on-the-job training, members of the AVF should be more 

productive and effective than members of a draft force. 

The Cost of the Armed Forces and 

Economic Efficiency

One factor in determining the relative merits of a draft 

and an AVF is comparing the full cost of the military 

under each approach. Supporters of the draft have argued 

that an all-volunteer force would cost more than a draft 

force because the military would have to pay significantly 

higher wages to attract and retain volunteers.26 That 

higher cost could potentially constrain the size of the 

armed forces, leaving them too small to fulfill their missions, or could crowd out necessary long-term defense 

spending on such items as weapon systems, equipment 

maintenance, and infrastructure. 

That cost argument was countered in the 1960s, when 

economists claimed that the full cost to society of a draft 

force was much larger than the budgetary costs reported 

at the time.27 From an economist’s perspective, the draft 

entails additional costs because it imposes a “hidden” or 

in-kind tax on draftees and draft-induced volunteers: 

Those individuals are typically paid wages that are below 

prevailing market rates and below their “reservation 

wages” (the earnings they would require to enlist voluntarily). The tax equals the difference between their reservation wages and the amount actually paid for their 

service. The hidden tax borne by each draftee or draftinduced volunteer is not included in DoD’s budgetary 

costs or counted in any government tally of spending or 

revenues. But it would have to be added to budgetary 

costs to estimate the nation’s total defense spending under 

a draft.

The Gates Commission, economists, and other observers 

have argued that the full economic cost of an AVF is less 

than that of a draft force, for at least four reasons:

B The in-kind tax is eliminated with a volunteer force. 

People volunteer because they are offered compensation that is at least equal to the value of their services 

elsewhere in the economy. Moreover, those who volunteer have lower reservation wages than draftees, 

some of whom may strongly dislike military service.

B Other costs of the draft are eliminated as well—primarily the costs of avoiding the draft, which economists 

view as an unproductive use of resources (a “dead 

weight loss”). If draft deferments and exemptions are 

available, they distort the personal and career plans of 

draft-age men. For instance, in the past, such men 

have married and had families earlier than they would 

have otherwise, or they have gone to college when 

they would not have otherwise. 

B Turnover rates should be lower and reenlistment rates 

higher under the AVF because the force is composed 

of willing recruits. As a result, the military should save 

money by having lower training costs and moreexperienced and productive members.28

26. Although the Gates Commission recommended ending the draft, 

it recognized that the AVF might incur higher budgetary costs 

than a draft force. It estimated that DoD’s annual spending on 

personnel would need to rise by a net $2 billion in 1970 dollars 

(roughly $9 billion in 2006 dollars)—or by about 8 percent—to 

attract enough volunteers to keep the size of the military at 

2.5 million personnel. See Report of the President’s Commission 

on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, p. 8.

27. For a fuller discussion, see Anthony C. Fisher, “The Cost of the 

Draft and the Cost of Ending the Draft,” American Economic 

Review, vol. 59, no. 3 (June 1969), pp. 239–254; Walter Oi, “The 

Economic Cost of the Draft,” American Economic Review, Papers 

and Proceedings of the Seventy-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, vol. 57, no. 2 (May 1967), pp. 39–62; 

and W. Lee Hansen and Burton A. Weisbrod, “Economics of the 

Military Draft,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 81, no. 3 

(August 1967), pp. 395–421.

28. The higher pay and benefits given to a more senior force could 

offset those savings, however. Some of the higher costs would 

result from the greater pay and benefits that service members with 

families receive. Although few enlisted personnel are married 

when they join the military, about half are married by the end of 

their first term.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 9

B The full cost of military personnel is less visible under 

a draft, which reduces how efficiently the economy 

functions (that is, whether available resources are put 

to their most productive use). In a draft system, manpower appears less expensive than its true cost, which 

causes conscripted labor to be substituted for other 

resources—and thus to be overused. The allocation of 

resources should be more efficient in a volunteer military because spending on personnel must compete 

with other uses of available defense budgets. The 

higher budgetary costs for personnel in the AVF 

should encourage substitutions of capital for labor, 

allowing a smaller but equally efficient force.

During the Vietnam era, supporters of an all-volunteer 

force acknowledged that, at times, conscription might be 

either necessary or less expensive than an AVF, although 

they expected those circumstances to be relatively 

unusual.29 Since then, theoretical models have identified 

the conditions under which the full costs to society of 

using conscription to procure military personnel may be 

lower than relying entirely on volunteers.30 Conscription 

is more likely to be economically efficient if:

B The supply of labor to the military is highly inelastic 

(in other words, large increases in wages would be necessary to attract volunteers);

B Individuals engage in significant activities to avoid 

federal taxation (so it would be costly to raise revenues 

in order to pay the volunteer force);

B The number of personnel that the military needs 

represents a large fraction of the eligible youth population;31 and

B The draft is structured in a way that makes it difficult 

to avoid (so people would not be likely to expend significant effort in evading the draft).

Because of a lack of data and other analytical difficulties, 

the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has not 

attempted to calculate a break-even point at which the 

full costs of a draft would be lower than those of an allvolunteer force. Nor has it found other studies that provide that information. However, some analysts have 

hypothesized that the military’s personnel requirements 

would have to be quite high, depending on the circumstances, before a draft was required. For example, during 

the mid-1980s, the active Army was able to attract and 

retain enough volunteers to field 16 divisions, containing 

a total of about 780,000 personnel (albeit during a period 

without major military conflicts). That force was more 

than 50 percent larger, and had six more divisions, than 

the current active Army.

Fairness and Sociopolitical Considerations

In some people’s eyes, the most important rationales for a 

draft or a volunteer military do not center on questions of 

effectiveness or cost. Rather, they involve such issues as 

the composition of the armed forces and the roles of the 

federal government, the military, and citizens. 

Representativeness of the Force. Volunteering to serve in 

the armed forces during a conflict exposes people to a 

higher risk of injury or death than the U.S. population in 

general faces.32 Serving as a draftee has the additional 

effect of diverting young people from their expected 

career and personal paths for two years. Consequently, 

the nation has long been concerned about who serves in 

the military. That question is complicated by the fact that 

with roughly 30 million men and women between the 

ages of 18 and 24 in the United States today, a small 

percentage of them are likely to be needed to fight. 29. See Milton Friedman, “Why Not a Volunteer Army,” in Sol Tax, 

ed., The Draft: A Handbook of Facts and Alternatives (Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 202; and Report of the 

President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, p. 121.

30. For a comprehensive discussion, see John T. Warner and Beth J. 

Asch, “The Economics of Military Manpower,” in Keith Harley 

and Todd Sandler, eds., Handbook of Defense Economics, vol. 1 

(New York: Elsevier Science, 1995), pp. 373–380; and John T. 

Warner and Beth J. Asch, “The Record and Prospects of the AllVolunteer Military in the United States,” Journal of Economic 

Perspectives, vol. 15, no. 2 (Spring 2001), pp. 169–192.

31. That condition would exacerbate the first two points by requiring 

larger movements along the supply curve of labor.

32. The mortality rate for troops serving in the Vietnam War was 

21.8 per 1,000 person-years. The rate for personnel in Iraq 

between March 2003 and March 2006 was 3.9 per 1,000 personyears (with the Marines experiencing the highest mortality rates). 

By comparison, the death rate for U.S. men ages 18 to 39 in 2003 

was 1.5 per 1,000 person-years. For a more detailed analysis of 

death rates in Iraq, see Samuel Preston and Emily Buzzell, Mortality of American Troops in Iraq, Working Paper 06-01 (Philadelphia: 

University of Pennsylvania Population Studies Center, August 

2006), available at http://repository.upenn.edu/psc_working_ 

papers/1/.
10 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

In the past, one way in which the United States determined who would serve was through the system of draft 

deferments and exemptions. However, that mechanism 

can be seen as inequitable, as happened during the Vietnam War. At that time, some people charged that deferments shifted service predominantly to lower-income 

and black youth, who could not obtain deferments as 

readily.33 Educational deferments, in particular, were 

singled out for criticism. 

Some observers, including the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service, have concluded that the 

solution to the question of who should serve is to give all 

individuals an equal risk of being inducted through the 

draft. As noted above, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, 

the nation moved to a lottery system for determining 

who should be inducted—and tightened or eliminated 

many deferments—to distribute military service more 

evenly throughout the male population. Although it has 

been modified since then, a random lottery of young men 

is the method of conscription mandated by the selective 

service legislation now in effect.

Other people dismiss altogether the notion that a draft 

can be equitable. In their view, the very fact that some 

individuals are forced to provide their service when others 

are not can be considered unfair. Although the National 

Advisory Commission on Selective Service recommended 

a random draft lottery, it acknowledged, “Complete 

equity can never exist when only some men out of many 

must be involuntarily inducted for military service.”34

The subsequent Gates Commission concluded: “When 

not all our citizens can serve, and only a small minority 

are needed, a voluntary decision to serve is the best 

answer, morally and practically, to the question of who 

should serve.”35 The Gates Commission argued that the 

hidden tax on draftees was a regressive tax on service 

members. By getting paid less than they would earn otherwise, draftees were forced to bear a larger share of the 

costs of national defense than individuals who were not 

drafted, thus lowering the costs for everyone else.

On the other side, some supporters of the draft argue that 

an all-volunteer force creates its own inequities. They 

maintain that the current AVF was designed to free the 

middle and upper classes from even the risk of military 

service and that lower-income groups or minorities bear a 

disproportionate share of service and combat. In that 

view, the military is particularly appealing to groups who 

have relatively poor civilian opportunities, because they 

are offered higher pay than they can receive elsewhere. 

Thus, those groups may be disproportionately drawn into 

the armed forces, with its attendant dangers. 

One response to that criticism is that if a socioeconomic 

group was disproportionately represented in the allvolunteer force, it would be because of individuals’ free 

choice, not compulsion. Proponents maintain that service 

members fare better in an AVF, in terms of wages, than 

they did under a draft system and that the AVF offers 

some people more opportunities and better lives than 

their civilian options do. (Critics counter that enlisting 

does not constitute volunteerism when poverty is the 

alternative.) In addition, the higher monetary rewards 

under an AVF are likely to attract additional recruits, 

including people with relatively better civilian opportunities, who would be less likely to volunteer under a mixed 

draft/volunteer system. The result, supporters say, is that 

the AVF produces a diverse, higher-quality force that is 

more motivated and effective. Finally, they argue that various reasons other than pay—such as patriotism, a sense 

of duty, or the desire to learn a new skill or travel to new 

places—also continue to attract a broad cross section of 

society to the military.

The Rights and Duties of Citizenship. Supporters of the 

draft maintain that service in defense of the country is a 

fundamental responsibility of citizenship. Opponents, 

however, say that the draft is at odds with the basic 

democratic principles of liberty, equality, and free choice. 

Others have claimed that requiring service undermines 

citizens’ respect for the government and the morale of the 

troops.

In various court cases, the Supreme Court has ruled that 

the government has the right to raise armies through 

conscription.36 The Constitutional provisions that give 33. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973, pp. 193 and 207.

34. National Advisory Commission on Selective Service, In Pursuit of 

Equity, p. 37.

35. Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed 

Force, p. 14.

36. See United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968); Lichter v. 

United States, 384 U.S. 742 (1948); and the Selective Draft Law 

Cases, 245 U.S. 366 (1918).
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 11

the Congress powers to declare war, to raise and support 

armies, and to make laws to execute those powers formed 

the basis for the Court’s decision on that issue in 1918. It 

stated, “The very conception of a just government and its 

duty to the citizen includes the reciprocal obligation of 

the citizen to render military service in case of need and 

the right to compel it.” In that line of reasoning, because 

the government is protecting citizens’ rights and property, 

it may require citizens to contribute to that protection.

Willingness to Engage Forces in Overseas Conflicts. 

Some critics of an all-volunteer force—both during the 

Vietnam War and today—argue that the United States is 

more likely to engage in foreign conflicts if it has a volunteer military, for several reasons. First, the AVF provides a 

standing pool of trained personnel ready to go to war, 

which the President could send into action with little 

public discussion. Second, the country’s leaders might be 

less reticent in using military force to resolve conflicts 

(as opposed to taking diplomatic or other approaches) 

because their relatives and friends would presumably be 

less likely to serve than most people. Finally, because 

middle- and higher-income individuals might no longer 

face the risk of being sent to war, the general public 

would be less concerned about committing troops to 

combat than it might have been under a draft system. In 

that view, protests against wars would probably be muted, 

and the public would not act as a brake on the decision to 

take part in military conflicts.

Proponents of the AVF argue that other considerations—

such as the cost of military resources and the risk to 

human lives—are likely to have more influence than the 

method of procuring personnel on whether the nation 

commits troops to an overseas conflict. If anything, supporters of the AVF have asserted, maintaining peacetime 

conscription could allow for greater use of the military 

than an all-volunteer force would. The President could 

increase the size of draft calls with minimal public debate 

and without Congressional approval. Thus, the President 

could engage the country in military operations that 

enjoyed little popular or Congressional support. With an 

AVF, by contrast, difficulties recruiting and retaining volunteers would act as a signal of public opinion and could 

limit the government’s ability to take part in unpopular 

wars.

Isolation of the Armed Forces. In the past, proponents of 

a draft argued that conscription could guard against the 

development of a separate military ethos—and keep the 

desires and goals of the military and the general public 

more closely aligned—by spreading the responsibility of 

serving in the military more or less evenly across most of 

society. In that view, an AVF that consisted of professional personnel could develop its own independent culture, allowing a division to grow between the military and 

civilian society. Some people expressed concern that the 

military could become composed of individuals who were 

inclined to use violence to solve problems and could even 

threaten civilian control.

Supporters of the all-volunteer force countered that draftees, who would have the lowest levels of authority, would 

not prevent or affect the development of a military ethos. 

In that view, if the military became too isolated from the 

rest of society, one solution would be to increase the 

interaction between the two groups. Encouraging service 

members to live and eat off-base, eliminating military 

schools, and shifting some military jobs to civilians 

could better integrate military personnel into civilian 

communities.

The Benefits of Military Service to Individuals. Observers 

have postulated many other personal and societal benefits 

from military service and conscription. Some people 

point to improved physical fitness, self-discipline, and 

training for youths; others, to ethnic, racial, and social 

diversity that allows personnel to experience and appreciate members of different classes, cultures, and education 

levels. Still others claim that military service instills 

greater patriotism and knowledge of foreign affairs. 

A desire to extend the benefits of military service to more 

young people, or to increase their readiness to serve in the 

military, has led to proposals for a system of compulsory 

or voluntary national service or universal military training in the United States. For instance, in 1966, President 

Dwight Eisenhower called for a program in which all 

young men would spend 49 weeks in military training.37

Anthropologist and social commentator Margaret Mead 

was one proponent of universal national service, in which

37. John O’Sullivan and Alan M. Meckler, eds., The Draft and Its 

Enemies (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1974), 

pp. 214–219.
12 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

both young men and women would be required to serve 

their country in some way.38

A counterargument is that many of the skills and ideals 

thought to result from serving in the armed forces could 

be taught in other spheres of the community—such as 

the school system—without resorting to compulsory 

military service.

Personnel in Today’s All-Volunteer 

Military

To shed light on some of the arguments discussed above, 

CBO examined trends in budgetary costs, the quality of 

the force, and various demographic characteristics of military personnel from the Vietnam era to the present. 

CBO also compared both new recruits and all service 

members with the civilian population along various 

dimensions.39

The Cost of the Armed Forces

As both proponents and critics of the all-volunteer force 

predicted, the budgetary cost of personnel increased significantly in the early years of the AVF as pay was raised 

to attract additional volunteers. Basic pay for new service 

members (E-1s with four months of service) almost 

doubled in real (inflation-adjusted) terms during that 

period—rising from about $700 per month in fiscal year 

1971 to $1,300 per month by 1975 (both in 2006 dollars).40 Those increases brought military pay in line with 

the median pay of young men working in the civilian 

sector.41 Increases in pay were generally smaller for the 

career force (personnel serving their second or subsequent 

enlistment), presumably in part because, even before the 

AVF, those service members received compensation packages that were competitive with their alternatives in the 

civilian sector. For some career personnel, basic pay grew 

by less than the rate of inflation.

In examining real expenditures from the military’s personnel accounts, CBO found that total manpower spending increased with the return of the AVF. Those expenditures averaged $97 billion a year in 1974 and 1975, 

compared with $68 billion a year in the pre-Vietnam War 

era of 1959 to 1963.42 That rise does not reflect the full 

increase in the cost per service member, however, because 

the early AVF was more than 15 percent smaller than the 

force of the pre-Vietnam period.

Critics of an all-volunteer force were concerned that the 

budgetary costs of personnel would become prohibitively 

high, crowding out spending on weapons and equipment. Personnel costs did grow as a percentage of the 

defense budget with the onset of the AVF. Personnel 

accounts totaled about 35 percent of the budget in the 

initial years of the AVF, compared with 28 percent during 

the pre-Vietnam era. Only a portion of that increase 

appears to be attributable to the all-volunteer force, however. According to the former General Accounting Office 

(GAO), the move to an AVF added about $3 billion per 

year in 1974 dollars to the military’s costs (more than 

38. Tax, The Draft: A Handbook of Facts and Alternatives, pp. 99–109. 

One drawback of implementing such plans today would be the 

budgetary cost. For example, if the roughly 4 million 18-year-olds 

in the United States were required to perform one year of military 

or public service but were paid market wages for that service 

(equal to the pay of young full-time workers), the cost would total 

approximately $80 billion a year, CBO estimates. That amount is 

almost three-quarters of the $108 billion that DoD spent from its 

military personnel accounts in 2006 for 1.4 million active-duty 

personnel.

39. The Department of Defense provides a report on population 

representation in the U.S. military to the Congress each year, in 

response to a standing requirement by the Senate Armed Services 

Committee (Report 93-884, May 1974). This discussion is partly 

based on the most recent report: Department of Defense, Office 

of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, 

Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005

(2007), available at www.humrro.org/poprep/poprep05/. 

Although that report was based on 2005 data, demographic characteristics (such as average age) usually change slowly and are 

probably largely similar now to what they were in 2005.

40. Historical military pay tables are available from the Department 

of Defense, Defense Financing and Accounting Service, at www. 

dod.mil/dfas/militarypay/2006militarypaytables/militarypay

priorrates.html.

41. Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, p. 42.

42. Those personnel costs, which are all given in 2006 dollars, include 

DoD’s spending on direct pay and allowances, as funded through 

the military personnel appropriation. They exclude spending on 

some other personnel-related functions (such as nonsalary recruiting costs, which are funded through DoD’s operation and maintenance appropriation) as well as the cost of tax collections that 

are forgone because some military pay and allowances are taxexempt. Through 1984, personnel expenditures include actual 

cash payments to retired service members; after 1984, they 

include an accrual charge for expected future retirement payments. See Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary 

of Defense (Comptroller), National Defense Budget Estimates for 

FY 2007 (March 2006), available at www.dod.mil/comptroller/

defbudget/fy2007/fy2007_greenbook.pdf.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 13

$10 billion in 2006 dollars)—or about 11 percent of 

DoD’s spending on its manpower budget accounts in 

1974.43 Most of the remaining increase resulted from 

higher cash payments to retired military personnel that 

were unrelated to the AVF. 

In all, military spending was about $26 billion higher (in 

2006 dollars) in the early years of the all-volunteer force 

than in the pre-Vietnam era. The military manpower 

accounts increased by about $29 billion over that period; 

DoD’s other budget accounts (totaling more than 

$170 billion in 2006 dollars, on average) decreased by 

about $3 billion.

To CBO’s knowledge, no studies have retrospectively 

examined the total cost of the draft. However, GAO’s 

estimate of the extra $10 billion (in 2006 dollars) paid to 

service members under the AVF could also be considered 

the lower-bound cost of the in-kind tax on draftees.

Quality and Effectiveness of the Force

Many research studies conducted in the past few decades 

have concluded that recruits who have earned a high 

school diploma have a greater likelihood of completing 

their initial training and first term of service in the 

enlisted force than individuals with no diploma or an 

alternative credential (such as a GED).44 Roughly 80 percent of recruits with high school diplomas complete their 

initial obligation, versus 60 percent of recruits with alternative credentials and 50 percent of recruits who did not 

finish high school. Service members’ completion rates are 

important to DoD because people’s level of experience in 

the military affects their productivity. Individuals with 

more years of service have generally acquired more 

knowledge and skills than those with fewer years. 

Research has shown that career military personnel are at 

least 1.5 times more productive than first-term personnel 

at certain tasks.45 As such, a force of a given size will have 

greater capabilities the more years of service its personnel 

have. In addition, a larger percentage of recruits who do 

not complete their obligation leads to higher costs for 

recruiting and training their replacements.

Research has also shown that recruits with higher scores 

on the military entrance exam—known as the Armed 

Forces Qualification Test (AFQT)—are more easily 

trained and perform better in a wide range of military 

occupations than personnel with lower scores do. DoD 

initiated an extensive multiyear study in which researchers watched service members perform their jobs, calculated their effectiveness, and then linked their performance scores to their AFQT scores. Researchers 

concluded that personnel with low AFQT scores (in the 

10th to 30th percentiles relative to a representative sample of the U.S. youth population) scored about 20 percent lower on performance tests than did members with 

high AFQT scores (in the top 30 percentiles). Furthermore, by their third year of service, those low-scoring 

service members had not reached the performance levels 

that recruits with high AFQT scores achieved in their 

first year on the job.46

Skills used in wartime have also been shown to depend on 

the quality of service members. For instance, researchers 

have found that performance in air combat simulations 

by Army enlisted personnel who operate Patriot missile 

systems rises sharply with AFQT scores.47 Another study 

has shown a similar, though smaller, relationship between 

how well Army enlisted members of tank crews perform 43. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability 

Office), Additional Costs of the All-Volunteer Force, FPCD-78-11 

(February 1978). The additional budgetary costs attributable to 

an AVF can be difficult to measure. At one extreme, some analysts 

might credit any changes in manpower costs since 1973 to the 

AVF because those costs would not have to be paid under a system 

of conscription. At the other extreme, analysts might claim that a 

draft system should pay market wages and that the cost of doing 

so should not be attributed to the AVF. The GAO study attributed the alignment of military pay with market wages to the 

inception of the AVF. An alternative estimate from 1973 by 

Joseph Califano, a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, 

was much higher: almost $6 billion for 1974. See Califano, 

“Doubts About an All-Volunteer Force.”

44. In this section, “recruits” refers specifically to recruits who have 

not served in the military before.

45. Studies describing the relationship between military experience, 

quality, and productivity are summarized in Warner and Asch, 

“The Economics of Military Manpower.” 

46. For an overview of the DoD study and others linking individuals’ 

quality to performance, see David J. Armor and Paul R. Sackett, 

“Manpower Quality in the All Volunteer Force,” in Barbara A. 

Bicksler, Curtis L. Gilroy, and John T. Warner, eds., The AllVolunteer Force: Thirty Years of Service (Washington, D.C.: 

Brassey’s, 2004).

47. B. Orvis, M. Childress, and M. Polich, Effects of Personnel Quality 

on the Performance of Patriot Air Defense System Operators, R-3901-

A (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1992).
14 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

on firing ranges and their AFQT scores.48 Relationships 

between AFQT scores, receipt of a high school diploma, 

and performance have also been found in other services.

Because training, completion rates of initial enlistment 

terms, and job performance have significant implications 

for the cost and effectiveness of the force, DoD places 

considerable emphasis on the educational achievement 

and AFQT scores of potential recruits—attributes that 

underpin its definition of personnel quality. In DoD’s 

view, the combination of a high school diploma and a high 

test score means that an individual has a high potential for 

success in the military. The increasing technological 

sophistication of weapon systems and growing complexity 

of many military jobs (even in the combat arms) can 

require significant training for service members to master. 

That situation makes more-experienced, more-capable 

personnel especially valuable to DoD (as they are to most 

employers). 

For the most part, DoD has been able to attract individuals with the educational and test-score credentials necessary to perform its missions. After 2004, however, the 

qualifications of some new personnel slipped, as the 

Army accepted a higher proportion of recruits who 

lacked high school diplomas, scored lower on the AFQT, 

or had to obtain special waivers to allow their enlistment 

(for example, because they had several misdemeanors on 

their record).49

Education Levels. The proportion of young people joining the military who have high school diplomas is much 

higher now than it was during the Vietnam era. Although 

data on the education levels of enlisted personnel during 

the draft period are not as readily available as data for the 

Figure 3.

Percentage of Non-Prior-Service

Recruits and Young Civilians with 

High School Diplomas, 1973 to 2006

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on Department of 

Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for 

Personnel and Readiness, Population Representation in 

the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005 (2007), available at 

www.humrro.org/poprep/poprep05; and Department of 

Defense, Directorate for Accession Policy.

Note: Data for recruits include only those who have earned high 

school diplomas. Data for civilians include people who hold 

general equivalency diplomas (GEDs) as well as high school 

graduates.

all-volunteer force, the RAND Corporation reported figures for the 1960s and early 1970s that are significantly 

lower than current levels: From 1960 through the first 

half of 1973, an average of about 70 percent of recruits 

had at least a high school diploma, compared with 

91 percent in 2006.50 In the first few years of the AVF, 

however, the proportion of recruits who were high school 

graduates declined, falling to a low of 60 percent in 1974. 

Most of that drop is attributed to a decrease in the number of recruits with “some college” education (that is, who 

had earned some college credits but no degree).

48. B. Scribner and others, “Are Smarter Tankers Better? AFQT and 

Military Productivity,” Armed Forces and Society, vol. 12 (1986), 

pp. 194–206. 

49. From time to time, the services have implemented programs to 

identify people who do not possess high school diplomas but have 

the potential to succeed in the military. For instance, under its 

GED Plus program, the Army introduced the Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM) in 2000 as an enlistment screening tool. 

Under that program, individuals without high school diplomas 

who might otherwise be ineligible for military service can enlist if 

they score sufficiently high on the AIM and meet other program 

requirements. If such programs successfully identify nongraduates 

who perform similarly to high school graduates, the impact of a 

decline in the percentage of recruits with high school diplomas on 

the effectiveness of the force will be lessened.

50. See Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, 

p. 133. More precisely, the percentages of recruits with high 

school diplomas reported in that study are 64 percent from 1960 

to 1964, 74 percent from 1965 to 1969, and 66 percent from 

1970 through the first six months of 1973.

1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2001 2005

0

50

60

70

80

90

100

DoD's Current Goal

Civilians Ages 18 to 24

Military Recruits
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 15

In the early and mid-1980s, larger numbers of betterqualified recruits were attracted to military service as 

DoD initiated policies designed to improve recruiting. It 

increased military pay relative to the earnings of civilian 

high school graduates, expanded education benefits, and 

boosted recruiting resources. In the early 1990s, DoD set 

a goal that at least 90 percent of enlisted recruits without 

prior service should have a high school diploma. (By 

comparison, 80 percent of the civilian youth population 

earned high school diplomas in 2006.) DoD has been 

able to meet that goal every year since it was established 

(see Figure 3). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the 

military was reduced in size and the number of new personnel who were needed fell significantly, the services 

were able to increase the proportion of recruits with high 

school diplomas, peaking at almost 98 percent in 1992. 

That number declined somewhat through the 1990s, in 

part because of improved job opportunities in the civilian 

sector (as evidenced by lower civilian unemployment 

rates for young people).

During the current decade, the share of recruits who are 

high school graduates has remained between 90 percent 

and 93 percent for the military as a whole, although it has 

varied by service. For example, the Navy has increased its 

figure in recent years as it once again shrinks its enlisted 

force, whereas the Army has fallen below DoD’s 90 percent goal. The proportion of new Army recruits with 

high school diplomas dropped to 87 percent in 2005 

and 81 percent in 2006—the lowest levels in at least 20 

years.51 The Army’s difficulties in meeting its numerical 

goals for recruiting in those years may partly explain the 

drop in education levels.

At the same time, the percentage of the U.S. population 

who attend college has risen, in part because the pay gap 

between workers with postsecondary education and high 

school graduates continues to widen. Enlisted service 

members are similar to the rest of society in that respect: 

Table 1.

Scoring Categories for the Armed 

Forces Qualification Test

Source: Congressional Budget Office.

a. Individual scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) 

are measured in terms of the distribution of scores of a nationally representative sample of young people. For example, someone whose test results fall in the 72nd percentile of that distribution receives an AFQT score of 72 (and is in category II).

Many of them earn college degrees (and some acquire 

advanced degrees) while serving in the military. CBO 

estimates that at least 6 percent of enlisted personnel have 

four-year college degrees.52 In addition, DoD requires 

individuals to have a college degree when they are commissioned into the officer corps or soon thereafter. As a 

result, a vast majority of active-duty officers—96 percent 

in 2005—have college degrees. In all, at least 20 percent 

of the combined enlisted force and officer corps (excluding warrant officers) holds four-year college degrees, compared with roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population 

ages 25 to 34. 

Test Scores. Results on the Armed Forces Qualification 

Test (which assesses basic verbal and mathematical ability) are another important dimension of the quality of 

new service members. Higher scores—which indicate 

higher cognitive ability—are statistically correlated with 

a greater likelihood of success in the military.

AFQT scores are divided into five groups: categories I 

and II represent scores in the 65th to 99th percentiles relative to the youth population in general, categories IIIA 

51. Data for 2005 and 2006 come from DoD’s Directorate for 

Accession Policy. For the Army, those statistics are consistently 

5 to 7 percentage points higher than data from DoD’s Population 

Representation in the Military Services report. One reason may be 

that the two sources account differently for recruits in special educational attainment programs. For instance, some recruits without 

high school diplomas (those who enter the GED Plus program) 

are excluded from the population of recruits (the denominator) in 

calculations by the Directorate for Accession Policy, but they may 

be counted as recruits without a high school diploma in the Population Representation report. 

52. For more information about the education levels of enlisted personnel, see Congressional Budget Office, Educational Attainment 

and Compensation of Enlisted Personnel (February 2004).

Category I 93-99

Category II 65-92

Category IIIA 50-64

Category IIIB 31-49

Category IV 10-30

Category V 1-9

AFQT Score

(Percentile)a
16 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 4.

Distribution of AFQT Scores for 

Non-Prior-Service Recruits and Young 

Civilians Under the Draft and the 

All-Volunteer Force

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on Richard V.L. Cooper, 

Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, R-1450-

ARPA (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1977), 

Table 8-3; and Department of Defense, Directorate for 

Accession Policy.

Notes: For a description of the scoring categories for the Armed 

Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), see Table 1.

Data for recruits during the draft era and for civilians in 2005 

include only men; data for recruits in 2006 include women as 

well as men. As a result, the data are not strictly comparable. (However, data for the draft era would not differ significantly if they included women, as less than 2 percent of 

recruits in that period were female.)

a. Numbers for the enlisted force include accessions for whom 

the AFQT score was unknown to the Directorate for Accession 

Policy. Numbers for civilian youths include those scoring in category V (who are statutorily barred from serving in the military).

and IIIB cover the 31st to 64th percentiles, category IV 

represents the 10th to 30th percentiles, and category V 

includes the 1st to 9th percentiles (see Table 1 on 

page 15). Categories I through IIIA represent the top half 

of scores (those at or above the 50th percentile). Individuals scoring in category V have been statutorily barred 

from enlistment or induction in the military since 1948. 

Data from 1960 through the first half of 1973 indicate 

that new service members’ AFQT scores were generally 

lower during the draft era than they have been under the 

all-volunteer force.53 During the 1960–1973 period, 37 

percent of male recruits scored in the top two categories, 

compared with 43 percent of male and female recruits in 

2006 (see Figure 4).54 In addition, 19 percent of draft-era 

recruits were in category IV, versus less than 2 percent last 

year.

The AFQT scores of recruits are also generally higher 

today than they were in the early years of the AVF (see 

Figure 5). For example, in 2006, 69 percent of recruits 

scored at or above the 50th percentile relative to the overall U.S. youth population, compared with less than 

60 percent in 1973. The proportion of recruits who 

scored in the top two categories in 2006 was one of the 

highest since the beginning of the AVF. Likewise, the percentage of recruits in category IV has declined significantly since 1973, except for an increase during the midand late 1970s. That increase (to a high of 33 percent in 

1980) resulted from two factors. First, pay for enlisted 

personnel fell by a total of about 13 percent in the late 

1970s relative to pay for comparable civilians, as increases 

in compensation for federal employees (including those 

serving in the military) were limited in an effort to control budget deficits.55 That decline made military service 

less attractive to high-aptitude recruits, who consequently 

Category

I

Category

II

Category

III

Category

IV

Category

V or

Unknown

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Draft-Era Enlisted Force (1960 to first half of 1973)

All-Volunteer Enlisted Force (2006)

18- to 23-Year-Old Civilians (2005)

a

53. Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, p. 132.

54. According to the scale used for the test, 35 percent of the civilian 

youth population should have AFQT scores in categories I and II. 

However, it is possible for test takers in the civilian population in 

different years to have a distribution of scores slightly different 

from that of the cohort for which the test was benchmarked. (The 

AFQT currently in use was benchmarked to the civilian population in 1997.) For example, in 2005, 36 percent of 18- to 23-yearold male civilians had AFQT scores in categories I and II.

55. Warner and Asch, “The Record and Prospects of the All-Volunteer 

Military in the United States,” p. 183.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 17

Figure 5.

Distribution of AFQT Scores for Non-Prior-Service Recruits in the All-Volunteer 

Force, by Scoring Category, 1973 to 2006

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Robert L. Goldich, Recruiting, Retention, and Quality in the All-Volunteer Force 

(Congressional Research Service, June 8, 1981); Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 

Readiness, Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005 (2007), available at www.humrro.org/poprep/

poprep05; and Department of Defense, Directorate for Accession Policy.

Notes: For a description of the scoring categories for the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), see Table 1. Category V is not included here 

because people who score in that category are statutorily barred from serving in the military.

AFQT scores from 1976 to 1980 reflect corrections from the miscalibration that occurred in that period.

had better civilian options. Second, a miscalibration of 

scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery 

(ASVAB) test, which forms the basis of the AFQT score, 

caused recruits who entered the services between 1976 

and 1980 to receive higher scores than their actual ability 

would merit.56 That problem allowed at least 125,000 

people to enter the military who would otherwise not 

have been admitted—or more than 7 percent of accessions during that period.

In response to the miscalibration, the Congress stipulated 

in the 1981 National Defense Authorization Act that, 

beginning in 1983, no more than 20 percent of new 

recruits could have scores in category IV.57 Since the 

1990s, DoD’s policy has been more restrictive: At least 

60 percent of new recruits should come from categories 

I to IIIA, and no more than 4 percent should come from 

category IV. (Early in the AVF, the services had set separate ceilings. The percentage of recruits allowed from category IV ranged from 10 percent in the Navy and Air 

Force to 20 percent in the Army.)58

In the mid- to late 1980s, the share of recruits in the top 

AFQT categories rose sharply and the percentage in the 

1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1999 2002 2005

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Category I

Category II

Category III

Category IV

56. The scoring was recalibrated in 1980, and the scores of those 

recruits were adjusted accordingly (mostly to lower categories); 

Figure 5 displays the adjusted scores. That correction is reflected 

in the drop in the percentage of scores in categories I to III 

between 1976 and 1980 and the corresponding increase in the 

share of recruits assigned to category IV. For more details, see 

Armor and Sackett, “Manpower Quality in the All Volunteer 

Force”; Rostker, I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer 

Force; and Robert L. Goldich, Recruiting, Retention, and Quality in 

the All-Volunteer Force (Congressional Research Service, June 8, 

1981).

57. The law also specified that no more than 35 percent of recruits 

without prior service could be non-high-school graduates and that 

those nongraduates who did enter the service had to have AFQT 

scores of at least 30.

58. Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, p. 136.
18 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

bottom category declined further, as programs such as the 

Montgomery GI bill were instituted that attracted young 

people with high aptitude. Similar to the pattern of 

recruits with high school diplomas, recruits with test 

scores in categories I and II peaked in 1992 (at 45 percent), with fewer recruits scoring in those top categories 

through the rest of the 1990s. The proportion of those 

recruits increased after 2001, reaching the 1992 level 

again by 2004. At the lower end of the scale, the percentage of recruits scoring in category IV dropped below 

0.5 percent in 1992, 2003, and 2004 but then rose to 

1.8 percent in 2005 and 2006, the highest level since 

1990. That increase was driven by the Army’s taking 

almost 4 percent of its recruits (the policy ceiling) from 

category IV in those years.

DoD defines individuals with high school diplomas and 

AFQT scores at or above the median as high-quality 

recruits. The military has to compete harder for such 

recruits because they have many options in the civilian 

sector, including attending college. In general, the allvolunteer force has been able to attract sufficient numbers 

of such individuals, particularly during times of high 

unemployment. The percentage of high-quality recruits 

dipped in the late 1970s and the early 1980s (the period 

of the ASVAB miscalibration), falling as low as 27 percent. 

However, that percentage rose sharply in the mid- to late 

1980s, peaking at 73 percent in 1992 (see Figure 6). It 

increased again after 2001 but slipped in 2005 and 2006. 

Data on the Army for 2005 and 2006 point to general 

declines in the quality of new personnel. The percentage of 

high-quality recruits in the Army fell to 49 percent in 

2006—the lowest level in more than 20 years and the 

lowest among the services. (The Marine Corps had the 

second-lowest share of high-quality recruits in 2006 at 

62 percent.) In addition to the drops in AFQT scores and 

in the percentage of high school graduates, quality in the 

Army appears to have fallen in recent years as measured by 

the proportion of recruits meeting other enlistment standards. For instance, the Army typically does not allow people to enlist under some circumstances, such as if they have 

certain medical conditions, several misdemeanor convictions, or felony arrests. However, they can petition for 

special consideration through DoD’s special exemptions 

program, which provides waivers. The total number of 

waivers granted by the Army has risen steadily in recent 

years, from 8,900 in 2004 to 10,200 in 2005 and 13,500 

in 2006 (or 11.5 percent, 13.9 percent, and 16.9 percent 

Figure 6.

Percentage of Non-Prior-Service 

Recruits Considered High Quality by 

the Military, 1973 to 2006

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on Department of 

Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for 

Personnel and Readiness, Population Representation in 

the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005 (2007), Table D-1, 

available at www.humrro.org/poprep/poprep05.

Note: In the military’s definition, high-quality recruits are high 

school graduates who score at least the median on the 

Armed Forces Qualification Test.

of recruits from those years, respectively). One type of 

waiver—behavioral or moral waivers—is given for nonmedical issues, such as certain preservice drug use, criminal 

charges, or convictions. The annual number of those waivers increased from 4,500 in 2004 to 5,500 in 2005 and 

8,100 in 2006 (or 5.8 percent, 7.5 percent, and 10.1 percent of recruits, respectively).59

Experience and Rank. Various factors, such as the personnel requirements and policies of the military and decisions by lawmakers, determine the experience level (years 

of service) and rank (pay grade) profile of the force. Average years of service have generally increased since the start 

of the all-volunteer force. For instance, the average length 

of service of active enlisted personnel was about 6 years in 

59. The number of waivers has fluctuated in the past. For example, 

the Army granted nearly 6,000 moral waivers in 1990, but by 

1997, that number had dropped to 2,400.

1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2001 2005

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 19

1974; it rose to a peak of 7.5 years in 1996 before 

decreasing slightly, to 7 years, by 2005.

The combination of years of service and pay grade indicates that experience levels are higher now than they were 

during the Vietnam era. In 1967, two-thirds of active 

enlisted personnel were in their first enlistment term 

(which varied from 2 years for draftees to 3 years for volunteers in the Army, 3.5 years in the Navy, and 4 years for 

regular enlistees in the Marine Corps and Air Force).60

Today, by comparison, roughly 46 percent of the active 

enlisted force has fewer than 4 years of service (meaning 

that personnel are probably in their first term), 39 percent has between 5 and 15 years of service, and the 

remaining 15 percent of the force has at least 16 years 

of service. 

The higher experience levels in the AVF compared with 

the draft-era force are partly attributable to higher pay—

which leads to less turnover—and longer initial enlistment terms. However, declines in the size of the military 

and in the number of new personnel required each year 

have also played a role. The military’s total end strength 

declined from a high of 3.5 million personnel in 1968 to 

2.1 million in 1978; correspondingly, the number of 

non-prior-service recruits required annually dropped 

from 843,000 to 304,000 over that period.61 In the early 

1990s, following the end of the Cold War, the size of the 

military was reduced again, and non-prior-service accession requirements fell further (from 277,000 in 1989 to 

179,000 in 1996). During that period, average years of 

service in the enlisted force rose steadily, reaching a peak 

in 1996. Besides cutting accession levels in that downsizing, DoD offered incentives for midcareer personnel 

(those with 7 to 15 years of service) to leave active duty. 

The most senior personnel were less affected by those 

incentives, which also caused average years of service to 

increase. Later, as those senior personnel retired, the force 

became less experienced, on average. 

Average experience levels differ among the services. Currently, the Marine Corps and the Army have the mostjunior enlisted forces, averaging about 5 and 7 years of 

service, respectively. The Navy and the Air Force are more 

experienced, with averages of 8 and more than 9 years of 

service, respectively.

In the officer corps, the average years of experience 

increased from 9.8 in 1974 to a peak of about 11 in 

2000 and then remained close to that level through 2005. 

Because of the way in which DoD reduced the size of 

the officer corps in the early to mid-1990s (mostly by 

decreasing the number of new commissions), the average 

years of service for officers continued to increase through 

the 1990s while the average for enlisted personnel 

declined slightly.

Years of service in the military are correlated with pay 

grade. As of September 2006, 52 percent of the active 

enlisted force was in pay grades E-1 to E-4 (typically firstterm service members, who are equivalent to trainees and 

apprentices), 36 percent was in grades E-5 and E-6 

(skilled journeymen), and 12 percent was in grades E-7 

to E-9 (supervisors).

Force Composition and Equity

During the Vietnam-era debate about ending the draft, 

many observers feared that an all-volunteer force would 

be disproportionately filled with low-income and minority youth, who would bear the brunt of the risks of combat. However, a variety of data suggest that the current 

AVF is broadly representative of U.S. society, although 

(because of the demands and history of military service) 

younger and less female than the population at large. 

Age. On the whole, the active-duty military is younger 

than the civilian population. By law, new active-duty 

recruits must be between 17 and 42 years old (in 2005, 

the typical enlisted recruit was 18).62 In addition, both 

officers and enlisted personnel rarely serve for more than 

30 years on active duty. Moreover, the services manage 

their forces through various policies to achieve the relative 

youthfulness that military service historically required. As 

a result, 47 percent of the active-duty enlisted force is 

between the ages of 17 and 24, compared with just 

19 percent of civilians of prime working age (17 to 49).

60. Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed 

Force, p. 51.

61. End strength is the number of personnel on active duty on the last 

day of the fiscal year. 

62. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2006 (Public Law 

109-163) raised the maximum age for enlistees from 35 to 42. 

The components of the individual services may have lower maximum age limits if they wish. The components of the Army chose 

to increase their maximum age to 42; the other services have not 

done so.
20 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Although active-duty officers are older than enlisted personnel, on average, they too are younger than comparable 

civilians (in this case, college graduates in the civilian 

workforce between the ages of 21 and 49).63 About 

73 percent of the active officer corps is less than 40 years 

old, whereas 61 percent of comparable civilians are in the 

same age group. 

Enlisted reservists tend to be older than active-duty personnel, but they too are younger than their civilian counterparts: 32 percent of reserve enlisted personnel are less 

than 25 years old, compared with 19 percent of civilians 

of the prime-working-age labor force. Reserve officers, by 

contrast, are slightly older than comparable civilians: Just 

48 percent are under age 40, compared with 61 percent 

of college-educated civilian workers in the 21–49 age 

range.

Gender. Although women make up half of civilians of 

prime working age, they constitute about 14 percent of 

active-duty enlisted personnel and 16 percent of active 

officers.64 Those numbers have increased steadily since 

the beginning of the all-volunteer force, when roughly 

2 percent of military personnel were female.

The increase in the representation of women in the military can be partly attributed to policy changes by lawmakers and DoD officials. For example, in 1967, the 

statutory ceiling that had limited the number of female 

personnel to no more than 2 percent of the force was 

lifted.65 Restrictions on the service of women in particular units or occupational skills were eased as well. By 

1994, female personnel could serve on naval vessels and 

aircraft that were assigned to combat, and most military 

occupations and positions were opened to women.66

However, female service members continue to be barred 

from ground combat occupations (such as infantry and 

tank crew), from certain types of units (such as specialoperations forces), and from Navy submarines. 

Although women may not serve in units whose primary 

mission is to engage in direct ground combat, they fill 

various support roles—such as truck driver or military 

police—in theaters of combat. Some of the support units 

to which women are assigned have engaged with or been 

engaged by enemy forces. As of December 2006, approximately 10 percent of the 205,000 active U.S. service 

members deployed in support of operations in Iraq and 

Afghanistan were women; through that date, about 60 

women had been killed in those operations (3 percent of 

total fatalities).

Race and Ethnicity. To answer the question of who has 

been fighting in the most recent operations, CBO examined how the representation of racial and ethnic groups in 

the armed forces compares with the composition of U.S. 

society and the extent to which various racial and ethnic 

groups have been represented among deployed personnel 

and fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Representation in the Force. Predictions that the AVF 

would be composed mainly of minorities have not come 

true. Members of the U.S. military are racially diverse 

(see Table 2). As of September 2006, nonwhite service 

members made up 26 percent of the active enlisted force 

and 14 percent of the active officer corps. White service 

members constituted 68 percent of the enlisted force and 

81 percent of officers.67 (In each case, the racial composition of an additional 6 percent of the force was 

unknown.)68 Those rates vary by gender, with minorities 

being more heavily represented among women.69

63. In 2005, the average age of active-duty officers was 34, whereas 

the average age of enlisted personnel was 27.

64. Women’s representation in the reserve components is slightly 

higher: They made up 17 percent of the reserve enlisted force and 

19 percent of the reserve officer corps in 2005.

65. That ceiling was contained in Public Law 90-130.

66. See the memorandum from Secretary of Defense William Perry, 

Application of the Definition of Direct Ground Combat and Assignment Rule (July 28, 1994).

67. In 2003, DoD changed its reporting of race and ethnicity. Before 

that year, service members were typically classified as either white, 

black, Hispanic, or other. The white, black, and other categories 

did not include people of Hispanic background, who were 

counted as a separate group. In 2003, DoD began reporting race 

and ethnicity separately. It now typically categorizes service members’ race as white, black, or other and, separately, their ethnicity 

as Hispanic or non-Hispanic. Under those definitions, the white 

and black racial categories can include people of Hispanic origin. 

The share of service members categorized as white increased by 

about 6 percent with the redefinition, but the share of enlisted 

personnel in the black category did not change significantly, 

because relatively few black personnel claim Hispanic origin.

68. Percentages are probably 1 to 2 points higher for nonwhite service 

members and 3 to 4 points higher for white service members, 

depending on the composition of personnel whose race was 

recorded as unknown.

69. Racial representation in the reserve components is roughly similar 

to that in the active-duty force, although nonwhites make up a 

somewhat smaller percentage. 
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 21

Table 2.

Racial and Ethnic Composition of 

Active-Duty Military Personnel and 

U.S. Civilians

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on Department of 

Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Population Representation in the 

Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005 (2007), available at 

www.humrro.org/poprep/poprep05; and Department of 

Defense, Defense Manpower Data Center.

Note: n.a. = not applicable.

a. As of September 2006.

b. As of 2005.

c. Includes Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people 

who identify themselves as multiracial, among others.

d. Hispanics may be of any race.

Black service members—the largest minority group in the 

military—were slightly underrepresented among recruits 

to the active enlisted force in 2005. They made up 

13 percent of new recruits that year, versus 14 percent of 

the U.S. population of prime recruiting age (18 to 24).70

Because black personnel have been a larger share of 

recruits in the past and because they have relatively high 

retention rates, however, they account for a larger share of 

the active enlisted force as a whole: 19 percent, compared 

with 14 percent of the civilian population of 17- to 49-

year-olds. Black service members make up a smaller percentage of the active officer corps: 9 percent. That figure 

is close to their 8 percent share of the population most 

comparable to military officers (college graduates ages 21 

to 49). 

By contrast, people of Hispanic background (who can be 

of any race) are underrepresented in the military. They 

make up about 11 percent of the enlisted force and 5 percent of the officer corps, despite accounting for about 

14 percent of civilians ages 17 to 49.

Other racial groups—which include Asians, Native 

Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people who identify 

themselves as multiracial—together make up 7 percent of 

the active enlisted force and 5 percent of the officer corps. 

Those percentages are roughly comparable to their total 

representation among civilians of similar ages (6 percent). 

Changes in Representation over Time. The current proportion of black personnel in the AVF is higher than that 

experienced during the Vietnam era under the mixed 

draft/volunteer force. In 1969, 13 percent of enlisted 

Army personnel and 11 percent of total enlisted military 

personnel were black, according to the report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force 

(compared with 12 percent of the young male population 

at that time).71 Among service members whom the commission identified as true volunteers, black representation 

was higher: 18 percent of enlisted Army volunteers and 

13 percent of enlisted volunteers as a whole.

Overall, the proportion of black service members grew 

rapidly after the inception of the all-volunteer force. A 

1997 RAND study attributed part of the increase to a rise 

in the percentage of black youth who qualified for service 

relative to nonblack youth.72 More black men ages 18 to 

21 were scoring in categories I to III on the AFQT than 

in earlier years, and more were completing high school. 

In addition, the study’s author argued that a change in 

Army testing procedures in 1973 eliminated a cultural 

bias present in earlier tests. Economic factors also contributed to the initial increase in black representation, as 

civilian employment options for black youth worsened. 

According to the study, the unemployment rate for black 

youth rose by more than 10 percentage points in the mid1970s from the level of the late 1960s, while the unemployment rate for white youth was more than 5 percentage points higher in the same period. The proportion of 

black personnel in the enlisted force as a whole rose to 

22 percent in the early 1980s and remained at about 

70. 2005 was the most recent year for which data on the racial composition of new recruits and comparably aged civilians were available. The data for the racial composition of the entire force 

(shown in Table 2) are as of September 2006.

White 68 81 80

Black 19 9 14

All othersc 75 6

Unknown 6 6 n.a.

11 5 14

Race

Hispanic Ethnicityd

Enlisted Civilians

Percentage of

Ages 17 to 49b

Percentage of

Personnel Officers

Active-Duty Forcea 

71. Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed 

Force, pp. 143–144.

72. Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force,

pp. 213–219.
22 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 7.

Percentage of Black Personnel in the Active Enlisted Force, by Service, 

1973 to 2006

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 

Readiness, Population Representation in the Military Services (various years); and Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data 

Center.

a. The definitions of the military’s self-reported racial and ethnic categories changed in 2003. Before then, the “black” and “white” categories did not include people of Hispanic background. After the change, those racial categories included people of Hispanic origin (who can 

be of any race). The percentages in the “black” category did not change significantly, however, because few black service members identify themselves as Hispanic. 

21 percent to 23 percent through 2001, although it has 

declined somewhat since then.

Black people’s representation in the enlisted force has varied by service, with black soldiers consistently making up 

a larger proportion of the Army than of the other services 

(see Figure 7). On average, black service members 

accounted for 29 percent of enlisted personnel in the 

Army between 1973 and 2006, versus 18 percent in the 

Marine Corps, 17 percent in the Air Force, and 16 percent in the Navy. (In recent years, however, the difference 

in participation rates between the Navy and Army has 

largely disappeared.) The average for the enlisted force as 

a whole over that 33-year period was 21 percent—larger 

than the percentage in September 2006.

The pattern of increased participation by black personnel 

in the early AVF was more pronounced in the Army than 

in the other services. Black representation in the Army 

climbed from 18 percent in 1973 to a peak of 33 percent 

in the early 1980s. It dipped temporarily in the mid1980s before beginning a gradual decline, from 32 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 2000. Although black soldiers still make up more than one-fifth of the Army, their 

representation has experienced a large, steady drop since 

2001, partly because of a decline in black enlistment.73

According to the most recent data that CBO obtained 

from DoD, the percentage of Army recruits without prior 

service who are black dropped from 22 percent to 14 percent between 2001 and 2004. (For the active components 

of the four services as a whole, that percentage fell from 

20 percent to 15 percent over the 2001–2004 period.) 

Economic factors may be partly responsible for the lower 

share of black recruits. Compared with levels in 2000, 

1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Army

Navy

Total DoD

Air Force

Marine Corps

2003 a

73. The proportion of the Marine Corps that is black has also 

declined significantly, from 16 percent in 2001 to 11 percent in 

2006. Over that period, the Air Force experienced a smaller drop 

(from 18 to 17 percent), while the proportion in the Navy 

remained stable (at 21 percent). 
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 23

Figure 8.

Percentage of Hispanic Personnel in the Active Enlisted Force, by Service, 

1973 to 2006

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 

Readiness, Population Representation in the Military Services (various years); and Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data 

Center.

Notes: People of Hispanic origin can be of any race. 

Data on percentages of Hispanic personnel were not available for the Air Force before 1975 and not available for the Marine Corps and 

Army (and hence for DoD as a whole) before 1976.

unemployment rates have increased more for white youth 

than for black youth in recent years, which may have led 

more white people to consider the military. Significant 

increases in military pay and benefits (such as aboveaverage raises in basic pay and allowances) took effect at 

roughly the same time. Together, those factors may have 

changed the relative attractiveness of military service to 

some racial groups.

The proportion of Hispanics in the active enlisted force 

has also risen during the AVF years (see Figure 8). The 

Marine Corps had the highest proportion of Hispanic 

enlisted personnel starting in the late 1970s, with further 

increases since then. Between 1976 and 2006, on average, 

Hispanic members made up 9 percent of enlisted personnel in the Marine Corps, 6 percent in the Army and 

Navy, and 4 percent in the Air Force. By comparison, 

the Hispanic population as a whole grew from 11 million 

(5 percent of the U.S. population) to 43 million (14 percent) over the 1973–2005 period.74

Military Occupations, Deployment, and Fatalities. One of 

the concerns expressed about instituting an all-volunteer 

force was the possibility that certain minority groups 

might bear more than their share of combat and casualties because they would make up a larger proportion of 

the military than of the U.S. population.75 To explore 

that issue, CBO obtained data from DoD on racial representation by military occupation, deployment status, and 

number of fatalities among active and reserve personnel 

deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom 

(OEF) in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom 

(OIF). CBO compared those data with the racial and

1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Army

Navy

Total DoD

Air Force

Marine Corps

74. Data on people of Hispanic or Latino origin come from Bureau of 

the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (various years). 

75. For more on that issue, see Rostker, I Want You! The Evolution of 

the All-Volunteer Force; and Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley 

Butler, All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
24 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

ethnic composition of the military’s overall enlisted force 

and officer corps.76

Although the comparison included all military occupations, CBO focused on jobs that are closer to the front 

lines of combat and hence face greater risk of injury or 

death. For the active enlisted force, the occupational 

group titled “Infantry, Gun Crews, and Seamanship” best 

fits that description. That category, which covers all four 

services, includes specific combat specialties within each 

service, such as infantryman, special forces, tank crewman, and gunner’s mate. For active-duty officers, CBO 

focused on the occupational group “Tactical Operations,” 

which includes fighter/bomber pilots, aircraft crews, 

ground and naval arms specialists, missile specialists, and 

operations staff.77 (Because of data limitations, CBO did 

not examine racial and ethnic representation by occupation in the reserve forces.)

Among active-duty enlisted personnel, the racial and 

ethnic composition of the “Infantry, Gun Crews, and 

Seamanship” occupational group is roughly similar to 

that of the enlisted force as a whole, with a few exceptions. White service members are overrepresented in 

those combat-related occupations, at 75 percent versus 

68 percent of the enlisted force (see the top panel of 

Figure 9).78 Black service members are underrepresented 

in that combat-related occupational group, accounting 

for 13 percent of those positions but 19 percent of the 

enlisted force. 

The various racial and ethnic groups in the military have 

been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq in similar proportions to their representation in the overall enlisted force. 

For example, white service members make up 68 percent 

of the enlisted force and 70 percent of personnel 

deployed to OEF and OIF. Black service members represent 19 percent of the force and 18 percent of deployed 

personnel. Service members of Hispanic origin constitute 

11 percent of the enlisted force and 12 percent of 

deployed personnel. 

An examination of the data on fatalities reveals the same 

pattern: Death rates among minority personnel in wartime theaters (combat deaths as well as those from disease, accidents, and other causes) are no greater than 

minorities’ representation in the force. White service 

members account for 76 percent of fatalities in OEF and 

OIF, compared with 68 percent of the active enlisted 

force. Conversely, although black personnel constitute 

19 percent of the active enlisted force, they make up 

13 percent of fatalities in those two operations. Deaths 

among all other racial groups and among personnel of 

Hispanic origin have been roughly proportional to their 

representation in the force. Studies of fatalities in past 

U.S. operations also concluded that black troops were not 

killed at a greater rate than their representation in the 

military.79

For officers in the active force, CBO found more or less 

the same pattern in the composition of combat-related 

occupations, deployed personnel, and fatalities (see the 

bottom panel of Figure 9). The racial and ethnic composition of officers deployed in support of OEF and OIF is 

roughly proportional to that of the active-duty officer 

corps as a whole. However, white officers account for a 

larger share of deaths in those operations than their representation in the officer corps (89 percent versus 81 percent), and black officers account for fewer deaths than 

their representation (3 percent versus 9 percent).

The military’s reserve components also contain combat 

forces, as well as a significant proportion of the units that 

provide support (such as logistics and engineering services) to combat units. For example, about two-thirds of 

the Army’s combat-service-support personnel—troops 

who provide services such as supply, maintenance, and 

transportation—are in the Army National Guard and 

76. The data were compared with representation in the AVF instead 

of representation in society because the former offers a more proximate comparison. It is possible for a racial or ethnic group to be 

underrepresented in the force relative to its share of the population at large and yet be overrepresented in, say, deployments relative to its representation in the force. In that case, comparing the 

group’s representation in deployments with its representation in 

society could conceal its disproportionate role in deployments.

77. CBO based its analysis on the primary occupational field for 

which personnel were trained.

78. As noted earlier, the racial composition of about 6 percent of 

active-duty service members is unknown, so the actual percentages 

of white and nonwhite personnel may be slightly higher than 

reported above. 

79. See Moskos and Butler, All That We Can Be. The authors presented the percentage of African Americans killed in seven previous operations: Vietnam (1964–1975), 12 percent; Mayaguez 

(1975), 7 percent; Lebanon (1983), 18 percent; Grenada (1983), 

0 percent; Panama (1989), 4 percent; first Gulf War (1991), 15 

percent; and Somalia (1992–1993), 7 percent.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 25

Figure 9.

Racial and Ethnic Representation in Military Occupational Specialties, 

Deployments, and Fatalities Among Active-Duty Personnel

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 

Readiness, Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005 (2007), available at www.humrro.org/poprep/

poprep05; Department of Defense, Statistical Information Analysis Division; and Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data 

Center. 

Notes: OEF = Operation Enduring Freedom; OIF = Operation Iraqi Freedom. Data on personnel deployments and fatalities for those operations are as of December 2006. 

“Other Race” includes Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people who identify themselves as multiracial, among others. 

People of Hispanic origin can be of any race.

The racial composition of about 6 percent of active enlisted personnel and officers is unknown. Depending on their actual racial composition, the percentages of white and nonwhite service members should be somewhat higher than shown here.

White Black Other Race

or Unknown

 Hispanic

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Percentage of Active Enlisted Force

Percentage in Infantry, Gun Crews, and Seamanship Specialties

Percentage of Personnel Deployed to OEF and OIF

Percentage of Fatalities from OEF and OIF

Active Enlisted Personnel

White Black Other Race

or Unknown

 Hispanic

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Percentage of Active Officer Corps

Percentage in Tactical Operations Specialties

Percentage of Personnel Deployed to OEF and OIF

Percentage of Fatalities from OEF and OIF

Active Officers
26 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 10.

Racial and Ethnic Representation in Deployments and Fatalities Among 

Reserve Personnel

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and 

Readiness, Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2005 (2007), available at www.humrro.org/poprep/

poprep05; Department of Defense, Statistical Information Analysis Division; and Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data 

Center. 

Notes: OEF = Operation Enduring Freedom; OIF = Operation Iraqi Freedom. Data on personnel deployments and fatalities for those operations are as of December 2006.

“Other Race” includes Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people who identify themselves as multiracial, among others. 

People of Hispanic origin can be of any race. 

The racial composition of about 5 percent of reserve enlisted personnel and officers is unknown. Depending on their actual racial composition, the percentages of white and nonwhite service members should be somewhat higher than shown here.

Because of data limitations, CBO did not examine the occupational representation of the reserve forces.

White Black Other Race

or Unknown

 Hispanic

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Percentage of Reserve Enlisted Force

Percentage of Personnel Deployed to OEF and OIF

Percentage of Fatalities from OEF and OIF

Reserve Enlisted Personnel

White Black Other Race

or Unknown

 Hispanic

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Percentage of Reserve Officer Corps

Percentage of Personnel Deployed to OEF and OIF

Percentage of Fatalities from OEF and OIF

Reserve Officers
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 27

Army Reserve. Since the onset of the war on terrorism, 

units in the reserve components have been called up and 

deployed in large numbers. 

The composition of reserve personnel deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom 

is roughly similar to the makeup of the reserve forces, and 

minorities are not overrepresented among reservists’ 

deaths in those operations (see Figure 10). In both the 

enlisted and officer ranks of the reserves, white personnel 

make up a greater share of fatalities than they do of the 

force (82 percent versus 75 percent for enlisted personnel, 

and 88 percent versus 82 percent for officers).80 The converse is true for enlisted reservists from minority groups. 

For example, black service members account for 10 percent of deaths among enlisted reservists in OEF and OIF 

but 16 percent of the reserve force as a whole. For Hispanic personnel, the figures are 5 percent versus 9 percent. Among the relatively small number of black reserve 

officers, fatalities have been in line with representation in 

the officer corps. 

Geographic Representation. Young people in different 

regions of the United States enlist in the military at different rates. The factors that affect geographic representation among new recruits include how local civilian wages 

and salaries compare with military pay, local rates of 

unemployment and college enrollment, and other demographic patterns. Changes in those factors in one region 

relative to another can also influence how geographic 

representation shifts over time.

A region’s share of military recruits can also be affected by 

changes in the overall geographic distribution of the U.S. 

population, especially the population between the ages of 

18 and 24. To control for that effect, CBO used representation ratios⎯the percentage of all new recruits from a 

region relative to the percentage of all 18- to 24-year-olds 

from that region⎯to examine differences in the geographic representation of recruits among four parts of the 

country in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2005 (the years for 

which data were available).81 A ratio of less than 1.0 

indicates that an area is relatively underrepresented; a 

ratio greater than 1.0 indicates the opposite. 

In each of the years in CBO’s analysis, the South supplied 

more recruits than its share of the youth population, as 

indicated by representation ratios over 1.0 (see Figure 

11). Moreover, that region’s importance to the military 

has grown over time. The West has also become more 

important as a source of recruits. Whereas it was underrepresented in earlier years, by 2005, the percentage of 

recruits from the West was roughly on a par with its share 

of the youth population. The representation of the 

Northeast has declined since 1980; it was underrepresented among new recruits in 2005, with a ratio of less 

than 0.8. The representation of the Midwest region has 

fluctuated, but that part of country was just about evenly 

represented in 2005, with a representation ratio of almost 

1.0.82

Socioeconomic Status. One of the key concerns about an 

all-volunteer force has been that it would disproportionately consist of recruits from lower-income households, 

while young people from middle- and upper-income 

households would opt out of military service altogether. 

Previous studies by various researchers and new analysis 

by CBO suggest that individuals from all income groups 

are represented roughly proportionately in the enlisted 

ranks of the AVF. However, CBO’s tabulations indicate 

that young people from the very highest- and lowestincome families may be somewhat less likely than others 

to join the military. (None of the studies examined the 

socioeconomic backgrounds of people who join the 

officer corps, apparently because of data limitations.)83

Studies Using Zip-Code-Based Data. Reliable information 

on the socioeconomic status of recruits—as measured by 

their family’s income, wealth, or occupations—is scarce. 

The Department of Defense does not regularly collect 

information about recruits’ family background. And in

80. The racial composition of an additional 5 percent of reserve 

enlisted personnel and officers was unknown. Representation is 

probably 3 to 4 percentage points higher than stated for white 

reservists and 1 to 2 percentage points higher for nonwhite reservists, depending on the composition of personnel whose race was 

recorded as unknown. 

81. This analysis uses the Census Bureau’s definition of regions, as 

described in Figure 11. 

82. The Midwest region was referred to as the North Central region 

until 1984, when that designation was changed.

83. Although no data are available that detail the distribution of 

income among officers before they joined the military, because 

people are required to have college degrees to serve as officers, 

and because earning a college degree is correlated with parental 

income, officers may be less likely than enlisted personnel to come 

from lower-income households.
28 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 11.

Changes in the Geographic 

Representation of Recruits Since 1980

(Representation ratio)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense 

for Personnel and Readiness, Population Representation in 

the Military Services (various years); and Department of 

Commerce, Bureau of the Census. 

Notes: The numbers shown here are representation ratios, which 

account for geographic changes in the U.S. population over 

time by measuring the percentage of all new recruits from a 

region relative to the percentage of all 18- to 24-year-olds 

from that region. A representation ratio greater than 1.0 

means that a region is overrepresented, whereas a ratio less 

than 1.0 implies that the region is underrepresented.

According to the Census Bureau's definition of regions, 

“Midwest” (formerly “North Central”) consists of Ohio, 

Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, 

Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. “Northeast” contains Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New 

Jersey, and Pennsylvania. “South” covers Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North 

Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, 

and Texas. “West” consists of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, 

Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Washington, 

Oregon, California, Alaska, and Hawaii.

any case, recruits’ knowledge of their parents’ financial 

well-being may be incomplete or inaccurate.

As an alternative, several researchers have compared the 

characteristics of areas where recruits lived before joining 

the military with the home areas of their civilian counterparts, using census data. The Census Bureau provides 

aggregated data on population, income, and broad demographic characteristics in five-digit zip-code areas for 

most of the U.S. population. Lacking data on individuals, 

researchers have used the median incomes in recruits’ 

home zip-code areas to measure their socioeconomic 

background and compared those median incomes with a 

civilian income distribution. That method gives a sense 

of whether recruits come from a representative mix of 

lower-, middle-, and higher-income areas.

To accurately reflect the family background of recruits, 

the median incomes in recruits’ home zip-code areas must 

closely approximate the median incomes of the recruits’ 

families themselves. If recruits are drawn from the lower 

(or higher) end of the income distribution in their zipcode area, the results will overstate (or understate) the 

portion of recruits who come from higher-income families. It is easy to imagine a zip-code area consisting largely 

of older retired people on fixed incomes, in which the 

parents of military recruits are in the workforce and thus 

have above-average incomes. It is equally easy to imagine 

a zip code in a wealthy suburb, in which the higherincome families send most of their children to college 

while the less-affluent youth consider military service. 

The greater the variation in income within a zip code, the 

larger the errors that can result from relying solely on 

median values.

Compounding that problem, income comparisons are 

also highly sensitive to the particular civilian comparison 

group that a researcher chooses. Because the vast majority 

of recruits enter the military directly from high school, 

having presumably lived with their parents or guardians, 

the most appropriate group for comparison is households 

headed by parents or guardians of civilian youth. However, income distributions for that subset of households 

are not readily available.

All the studies known to CBO use a similar methodology 

to determine the distribution of income of recruits’ home 

areas; however, each study uses a different civilian population group for the income comparisons. For example, a 

Midwest Northeast South West

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1980 1990 2000 2005
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 29

1977 study by RAND used the zip code as the basic data 

element but gave equal weight to each zip-code area 

(regardless of differences in population in those areas) 

when estimating the overall U.S. income distribution.84

A 1989 study by CBO improved on that method by 

weighting the median income for each zip-code area by 

the total population in that area to estimate the overall 

income distribution.85

More recently, a study by the National Priorities Project 

(NPP) analyzed the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds in 

a given income range who joined the active Army in 

2004, 2005, and 2006.86 The study looked at the share 

of Army recruits living in zip-code areas where the 

median household income was in a specific range and 

compared that share with the percentage of the total 

youth population living in those areas. The authors constructed ratios of those shares: A ratio greater than 1.0 

indicates that a given income range is overrepresented in 

the Army; a ratio of less than 1.0 means the opposite.

Finally, a study published last year by the Heritage Foundation computed the distribution of income among civilian households by obtaining the median incomes of zipcode areas where 18- to 24-year-olds live, either as heads 

of households or as dependents.87 Those median incomes 

were weighted by the distribution of 18- to 24-year-olds 

among the various zip codes (so that median incomes of 

areas with more people in that age group received more 

weight). Both that and NPP’s method are also subject to 

the criticism that median household income is a crude 

measure of the income of specific individuals. 

Because of methodological problems with using zip-code 

data, conclusions about recruits’ family income that are 

based on any of those studies should be considered tentative. Nevertheless, all of the studies determined that the 

AVF has attracted recruits from the poorest to the wealthiest of areas. 

The RAND study examined both the draft-lottery era 

(1971 and 1972) and the early AVF (January 1973 

through June 1975). It concluded that the income distributions of home areas for enlisted recruits were almost 

identical during the two periods. In both cases, the 

10 percent of zip codes in the lowest-income areas 

produced 4 percent of recruits, and the 10 percent of 

zip codes in the highest-income areas yielded 8 percent 

of recruits. About 55 percent of recruits came from 

zip codes in the middle 50 percent of the income 

distribution.

The CBO study from 1989 compared two years, 1980 

and 1987. In both years, the lowest-income areas were 

slightly overrepresented among military recruits and the 

highest-income areas were underrepresented. For 

instance, approximately 11 percent to 13 percent of 

recruits in both 1980 and 1987 came from areas with 

family income levels in the lowest 10 percent of the 

income distribution, while about 6 percent of recruits 

came from areas in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. Of the 100 zip codes in the United States with 

the highest median incomes, more than three-quarters 

were represented in the 1987 cohort of recruits. However, 

overall enlistment rates from those zip codes were about 

one-fifth of the national average. The study also found 

that in 1987, black recruits were more likely to come 

from areas with the highest black family incomes, a 

change from earlier in the decade. That shift may have 

reflected the military’s higher graduation standards and 

the attractiveness of the newly created Montgomery GI 

Bill to black youth who were interested in eventually 

enrolling in college.

According to the NPP study, zip-code areas with low to 

middle median household incomes (between $30,000 

and $59,999) were overrepresented among Army recruits 

from 2004 to 2006.88 Zip-code areas with median 

incomes below $30,000 or above $60,000 were underrepresented in those years. (By comparison, the median 

U.S. household income was $47,837.)

Unlike those other analyses, the 2006 study by the Heritage Foundation concluded that recruits were coming 

disproportionately from the top 40 percent of the income 

distribution.

84. Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force.

85. Congressional Budget Office, Social Representation in the U.S. 

Military (October 1989).

86. National Priorities Project, “Military Recruiting 2006,” available 

at www.nationalpriorities.org/Publications/Military-Recruiting2006.html. NPP is a nonprofit research organization that analyzes 

data on federal spending and policies.

87. Tim Kane, Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics 

of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005, CDA06-09 (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 2006).

88. For a graphic illustration of the study’s results, see www.

nationalpriorities.org/charts/Army-recruits-by-neighborhoodincome-2004-2005-2006.html.
30 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Figure 12.

Distribution of Active-Duty Enlisted Personnel, by Family Income Prior to 

Military Service

(Percent)

Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data for 2000 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth conducted by the Department 

of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Analysis Using Parent-Reported Data. To avoid some of the 

problems of the approach based on zip codes, CBO 

recently analyzed the family incomes of young people 

using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 

(NLSY). The survey sample that CBO used includes 

more than 5,000 teenagers who were first interviewed in 

1997 and have been reinterviewed each year since then. 

CBO identified the young people in that survey who 

were serving in the enlisted ranks of the active-duty military in 2000, between the ages of 17 and 21, and compared their family incomes before their military service 

with the family incomes of the rest of the young people in 

the survey.89 Unlike in the previous studies, that sample 

does not represent new recruits in a particular year (in 

this case, 2000) but rather young enlistees as of that year. 

An advantage of that method is that it uses direct information about the socioeconomic background of the 

recruits as reported by their parents. Additionally, the 

civilian comparison group consists of other households 

with teenage children residing in them, an appropriate 

comparison. The disadvantage of using the NLSY is that 

the sample of enlisted service members in the survey 

totaled just over 100 people, albeit weighted to reflect the 

total U.S. population. Because of the small sample size, 

these results should also be considered tentative.

CBO’s analysis suggests that youth are represented in the 

military at all socioeconomic levels. However, young people from the lowest-income and highest-income families 

are less likely to be represented in the enlisted force than 

their peers (see Figure 12). By contrast, young people 

whose family incomes are in the 10th to 25th percentiles, 

the 25th to 50th percentiles, and the 75th to 90th percentiles are slightly overrepresented in the military.

Those results are consistent with a DoD survey of recruits 

conducted in 1999 that compared selected characteristics 

of recruits’ family backgrounds with those of their civilian 

counterparts.90 The employment status of their fathers 

Lowest 10

Percent

10 to 25

Percent

25 to 50

Percent

50 to 75

Percent

75 to 90

Percent

Highest 10

Percent

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Income Category (Based on families with recruit-age youths)

Families of Enlisted Personnel

Families with Recruit-Age Youths

89. The NLSY sample draws disproportionately from the lower end of 

the income distribution. CBO weighted the full sample to represent U.S. households with children in residence. As a result, the 

characteristics of the military subset of that sample should be representative of young enlisted personnel in 2000. Because of the 

ages of the young people included in the NLSY, CBO’s sample did 

not contain any military officers. 

90. Department of Defense, Population Representation in the Military 

Services, Fiscal Year 1999 (November 2000), available at www. 

dod.mil/prhome/poprep99/.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 31

was almost identical for recruits and recruit-age civilians: 

90 percent and 89 percent, respectively, were employed. 

The distribution of occupations for the two groups’ 

fathers was broadly similar, though with some differences: 

fewer recruits had fathers who were employed in the typically higher-paid executive, administrative, managerial, or 

professional occupations than the recruit-age civilian 

population did (25 percent versus 34 percent).

CBO’s results are also broadly consistent with the NPP 

study’s findings that zip-code areas with household 

incomes well below and well above the median income 

were underrepresented among recruits, whereas areas in 

the low-to-middle range of household incomes were overrepresented. (Neither of those studies is consistent with 

the Heritage Foundation’s conclusion that recruits come 

disproportionately from the top 40 percent of the income 

distribution.)

Some Implications of

Reinstating the Draft

Currently, young men are required to register for a possible military draft with the Selective Service System within 

30 days of their 18th birthday. The system is charged 

with providing untrained personnel (or people with professional health care skills) to the Department of Defense 

for military service if directed by the Congress and the 

President in a national crisis. Although the Selective 

Service System does not classify the readiness of registrants for military service, it employs part-time state 

directors and has thousands of trained, unpaid volunteers 

for local review and appeal boards who would classify registrants as required in a time of national emergency. 

Should the nation decide to resume a draft under the current governing statute (the Military Selective Service Act 

of 1940, as amended), a defined sequence of events 

would occur before draftees began to enter military training.91 The first step required would be for the Congress 

and President to enact a law authorizing a resumption of 

an active draft. A random lottery would then be held to 

determine which registered men would be called up for 

possible induction.92 (Multiple lotteries could be conducted over the course of the national emergency, 

depending on the number of draftees required.) Men 

between the ages of 18 and 26 would be liable for 

induction, although current plans state that men who 

turn 20 during the draft year would be called first, followed in age sequence by 21-year-olds through 25-yearolds, as needed. 

After the lottery, registrants who had been called up 

would report to a military entrance-processing station for 

a physical, mental, and moral evaluation to determine 

whether they were fit for military service. Registrants 

could then file a claim for exemption, postponement, or 

deferment based on existing statutory regulations. Concurrently, Selective Service workers would report for duty, 

and local review and appeal boards would begin processing registrants’ claims. DoD requires the Selective Service 

System to begin delivering inductees within 193 days of 

starting operations. 

Revisions to the Military Selective Service Act in the late 

1960s and early 1970s limited deferments from military 

training and service, particularly those based on attending 

college or graduate school. Under current law, undergraduate students who were selected for service would be 

allowed to complete their semester or, in some cases, their 

full year of school. Deferments for married men are not 

permitted, although deferments for people who have 

dependents or are employed in certain occupations may 

be granted on a case-by-case basis.

Besides procedural considerations, a reinstatement of the 

draft would raise various substantive issues related to 

force size and personnel policies in the military. Those 

issues include the size of the draft and its effect on the 

personnel structure of the armed forces, the amount of 

time that would be needed for draftees to be available 

for deployment, possible budgetary effects, and equity 

considerations.

Size of the Draft and Effects on Personnel Structure

The U.S. military currently consists of 1.4 million personnel in the active component and 840,000 personnel 

in the National Guard and Reserve. Of those, about 

205,000 were deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom in December 2006. 

91. Those steps are laid out at the Selective Service System’s Web site, 

www.sss.gov/seq.htm.

92. The Military Selective Service Act, 50 U.S.C. Appendix 451 et 

seq., describes the eligibility and procedures for induction under a 

draft as well as permissible exemptions and deferments. As currently written, the law refers specifically to “male persons” in stating who must register and who would be drafted. If lawmakers 

wished to include women in the draft, the Selective Service Act 

would have to be amended.
32 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Some of the factors that would bring about a decision to 

reinstate the draft would probably also affect the size of 

the draft. For instance, if the draft was intended to augment the current force in order to relieve stresses related 

to the war on terrorism, it would be a particular size. But 

if the draft was designed to completely replace the current 

all-volunteer force with inductees, it would be much bigger. Whatever the case, a draft would lead to changes in 

the military’s accession requirements and in the experience and seniority levels of the force.

To give a rough idea of possible changes, CBO examined 

the likely force structure of the active Army under various 

scenarios, assuming that it either remained an allvolunteer force or used a draft to supplement or almost 

wholly replace volunteers. For that analysis, CBO first 

estimated the accession levels and continuation rates for 

service members at each level of experience that would be 

required for the current all-volunteer Army to achieve its 

end-strength goal for 2012 (as expressed in the latest 

Future Years Defense Program).93 That goal is 547,400 

soldiers: 92,700 officers and 454,700 enlisted personnel.94 Then, CBO considered what would happen to end 

strength if voluntary accessions and continuation rates 

fell and draftees were used to make up the gap. For the 

scenarios that envision a mixed draft/volunteer force, 

CBO assumed that draftees would be required to serve 

for two consecutive years, as stipulated in the Military 

Selective Service Act. Volunteers would serve the same 

initial terms of active service that they do now, which 

generally range from four to six years.

Personnel Requirements Under an All-Volunteer Force. 

Expanding the active Army from 419,350 enlisted personnel at the end of 2006 to 454,700 by the end of 2012 

with an all-volunteer force would require the service to 

recruit and retain significant numbers of personnel. In 

the past few years, the Army has boosted recruiting 

resources, such as enlistment bonuses, as well as financial 

incentives to retain people already in the service (selective 

reenlistment bonuses). The Army’s recruiting target for 

2007 is 80,000 enlisted personnel, the same as in the two 

previous years. Although the Army fell short of that goal 

in 2005 (obtaining 73,400 accessions), it achieved that 

level in 2006.95 The overall continuation rate for existing 

personnel in 2005, 82.4 percent, was below the average 

rate experienced since 1990. But in 2006, the Army was 

able to turn that situation around and post one of the 

highest continuation rates of the previous 15 years, 

84.5 percent overall. 

In its first scenario, CBO assumed that the Army would 

maintain accessions and continuation rates at their 2006 

levels in coming years. In that case, the service would 

reach its end-strength goal by 2012 (see Table 3). However, the combination of accession numbers and continuation rates at those levels has not been sustained at any 

time during the past 15 years.

In scenario 2, CBO assumed that continuation rates 

would drop to a mix of the 2005 and 2006 levels. That 

might occur either because reenlistment incentives were 

scaled back, other DoD policies changed, or the retention 

environment worsened. The Army would then need to 

recruit a larger number of personnel into the enlisted 

force—between 86,000 and 90,000 a year—to meet its 

2012 target for end strength. However, the Army has not 

attracted that many recruits in any year since 1990.

In scenario 3, CBO assumed not only that continuation 

rates would drop to a mix of the 2005 and 2006 levels 

but also that voluntary enlistments would fall to 74,000 a 

year (roughly the number of recruits in 2005). In that 

case, the Army would fall short of its end-strength goal by 

almost 48,000 enlisted personnel in 2012.

Personnel Requirements Under a Mixed Force of Volunteers and Draftees. In its other three scenarios, CBO 

explored the implications of using draftees to eliminate 

the end-strength shortfall that would result if voluntary 

accessions fell or were restricted to less than last year’s

93. Continuation rates measure the proportion of service members 

who remain in the military over a specific period regardless of the 

expiration of their contracts. For detailed information on the 

methodology that CBO used, see Congressional Budget Office, 

Recruiting, Retention, and Future Levels of Military Personnel. 

94. If the size of U.S. forces in the Iraq theater fell to 15 brigades and 

remained at that level while the Army grew to 547,400 personnel 

by 2012, ground combat forces in the active components (including Marine Corps units) would have two units at their home stations for every unit deployed—a rotation ratio that meets the 

Army’s goals. 

95. In 2007, the Army met its monthly recruiting goals for the first 

seven months of the fiscal year but missed its targets for May and 

June. See Josh White, “Army’s Recruiting Goal Lags for Second 

Month in a Row,” Washington Post, July 10, 2007, p. A7.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 33

Table 3.

Effects of Voluntary and Draft Accessions on Future End Strength in the 

Active Army’s Enlisted Force

Source: Congressional Budget Office.

Notes: Accessions are recruits who sign contracts with the military and report to basic training. Continuation rates measure the proportion of 

service members who remain in the military over a specific period (usually one year) regardless of the expiration of their contracts. 

End strength is the number of personnel on active duty on the last day of the fiscal year.

The active Army had 73,400 accessions in 2005 and 80,000 in 2006. Overall continuation rates in those years were 82.4 percent and 

84.5 percent, respectively. End strength in 2006 was 505,400 enlisted personnel.

a. Scenarios 4, 5, and 6 assume that the draft would begin in 2008. In the initial years, annual numbers of draftees would be smaller than 

the numbers shown here for 2012.

b. The 2008 Future Years Defense Program calls for the active Army to have a total of 547,400 enlisted personnel and officers by the end of 

2012.

high level (either slightly or significantly) and if continuation rates declined to a mix of the rates from 2005 and 

2006. In these scenarios, CBO assumed that continuation rates for draftees would be similar to those for volunteers in their first two years (although about 90 percent of 

draftees leave the military when their two-year obligation 

expires). Because of the procedural issues involved in 

instituting a draft, CBO also assumed that the first batch 

of inductees would not be drafted until 2008.

In scenario 4, CBO assumed that voluntary accessions 

would plateau at the 2005 level of 74,000 recruits annually, as in scenario 3. But instead of falling almost 48,000 

people short of its desired end strength in 2012, the 

Army would make up the difference through a draft. In 

that case, about 14,000 inductees would be needed in 

the first year, rising to about 27,000 a year by 2012 (see 

Table 3). When the force was fully constituted, inductees 

would make up just over one-quarter of annual accessions 

and about 10 percent of enlisted personnel.

With a draft, more recruits would be needed to reach a 

given end strength than is the case in an all-volunteer 

force. Under current law, individuals would be inducted 

for two years of service, substantially less than the initial 

obligations that are typical in today’s AVF (although 

many service members leave the military before the end 

of their initial obligation because of medical problems, 

poor performance, or other reasons). Those shorter obligations mean that a draft system results in greater turnover, which necessitates a larger number of accessions.

In scenario 4, an annual total of more than 100,000 volunteers and inductees (rather than 86,000 to 90,000 volunteers) would be needed by the fifth year of the draft 

(2012) and thereafter to reach and maintain the endstrength goal. Accession cohorts of that size would be 

likely to strain DoD’s existing entrance-processing and 

training infrastructure—whose capabilities are being further reduced by closings under the military’s base realignment and closure process. The number of personnel 

devoted to training recruits and inductees would have 

to be boosted, and the costs of training would rise.

CBO's

Scenario

1 80,000 0 2006 level 547,400 

2 86,000 to 90,000 0 Mix of 2005 and 2006 levels 547,400 

3 74,000 0 Mix of 2005 and 2006 levels 499,500 

4 74,000 27,000 Mix of 2005 and 2006 levels 547,400 

5 40,000 94,000 Mix of 2005 and 2006 levels 547,400 

6 5,000 165,000 Mix of 2005 and 2006 levels 547,400 

All-Volunteer Force

Mixed Draft/Volunteer Force

in 2012b Volunteers

Number of Annual Accessions by 2012 End Strength 

Drafteesa Overall Continuation Rate
34 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

Another implication of the draft is that the force would 

become more junior and less experienced than the current AVF. Because inductees serve for a shorter time than 

volunteers, having larger numbers of draftees relative to 

volunteers would necessarily result in a force with fewer 

average years of service. In scenario 4, more than half of 

the Army’s enlisted personnel (51 percent) would have 

fewer than three years of experience by 2012, compared 

with less than 45 percent of enlisted personnel in an allvolunteer force. Usually, greater accumulated knowledge 

and skills come with increased experience. As noted 

above, research has shown that military personnel with 

more than four years of service are 1.5 times more 

productive in certain jobs than personnel in their first 

term.96 Another aspect of seniority is that certain military 

positions require advanced pay grades, which generally 

can be filled only by more-experienced personnel. 

Because most draftees leave after completing a two-year 

obligation, a draft might affect the services’ ability to 

perform those functions efficiently. 

In the fifth scenario, CBO assumed that only about 

40,000 recruits would volunteer each year; the rest of the 

force would be drafted. Under those conditions, the 

Army would need as many as 94,000 draftees a year—

nearly the average size of the Vietnam-era drafts from 

1960 to 1962—to meet its end-strength target for 

2012.97 Total accessions (draftees and volunteers combined) would equal 134,000, about 50 percent more 

than the number required for an AVF of the same end 

strength. The concerns described above about the capacity of the Army’s entrance-processing and training infrastructure would apply even more in this case. Additional 

investments in infrastructure might be necessary to 

accommodate accession cohorts of 134,000. Costs for 

training, and probably for base operating support, would 

increase as well.

Moreover, in scenario 5, draftees would make up about 

one-third of enlisted personnel by 2012. At that point, 

57 percent of the enlisted force would have fewer than 

three years of experience, compared with less than 

45 percent of an all-volunteer enlisted force. Although 

that decreased seniority would reduce spending on 

military pay per person, it would also diminish the 

productivity of the force.

In its sixth and final scenario, CBO assumed that 

accessions would be almost wholly draftees; only 5,000 

recruits would be volunteers. Although that scenario 

would probably not be able to meet the Army’s requirements for experienced personnel, CBO included it to 

illustrate the trade-off between all-volunteer recruits and 

draftees. If continuation rates were the same as those 

assumed for the previous draft scenarios, the Army would 

need almost 165,000 draftees each year to reach a force 

size of 547,400 personnel by 2012. That level of inductees is almost double the number of recruits needed for an 

all-volunteer force of the same end strength. In addition, 

the average seniority of the force would decline substantially: Almost two-thirds of enlisted personnel would 

have fewer than three years of experience. 

Budgetary Costs and Savings and 

Levels of Military Pay 

Reinstating the draft might increase some costs associated 

with military personnel, but on net, the result could be 

budgetary savings. With a less experienced force, spending on pay and benefits would be lower; those expenditures would decline further if the level of basic pay was 

cut. Spending on recruiting—such as advertising, numbers of recruiters, enlistment bonuses, and education programs—might be reduced as well. Savings in those areas 

would be at least partly offset by higher expenditures for 

training (including instructors’ and students’ salaries) and 

possibly for additional infrastructure. 

Although including draftees in the force could yield budgetary savings, that force would not be as effective as if 

the same increase in end strength was achieved using only 

volunteers, because average seniority would fall. Producing an equally effective draft force would require having 

higher end strength than in an AVF, which would necessitate larger draft calls than those considered in the above 

scenarios.

Because the parameters of a draft are highly uncertain, 

CBO did not try to estimate the precise budgetary savings associated with any particular implementation of the

96. Warner and Asch, “The Economics of Military Manpower.”

97. Because scenario 5 entails such a large shift between short-term 

draftees and longer-term obligations, the experience profile of the 

force would change significantly. Consequently, a steady state 

would not be reached until 20 years after the draft began. By that 

time, annual inductions would reach 112,000. 
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 35

draft.98 However, to indicate the maximum extent of 

possible savings, CBO has identified some of the most 

important activities whose costs would change under a 

draft Army and the amounts spent on them in 2006. 

Savings on Pay and Benefits. Because a draft Army would 

experience higher turnover at the end of the first term of 

service, it would evolve into a force with lower average 

seniority than the current volunteer force. Total spending 

on basic pay—and on other types of pay or benefits that 

depend on members’ length of service or rank—would 

decline. In addition, a smaller proportion of entering soldiers would remain in the Army until retirement, so less 

money would have to be accrued for military retirement 

pay and retiree health care.99 Moreover, some elements of 

military pay, such as the basic allowance for housing, 

depend on family status. Because a less senior draft force 

would probably have a lower proportion of families than 

an AVF, spending on those elements of compensation 

would also decline. Under the draft scenarios discussed 

above, if the basic-pay table remained the same, declines 

in the average experience level of the force could save the 

active Army between $800 million and $1.1 billion a year 

from its military personnel accounts (excluding savings 

from reducing recruiting and retention incentives), CBO 

estimates. In all, the active Army spent about $30 billion 

from its personnel accounts for enlisted service members 

in 2006, including supplemental funding.

Some people might argue that to reap greater budgetary 

savings from a draft, military compensation could be 

reduced. Although fewer individuals might volunteer for 

service as military pay declined, the number of draftees 

could be increased. As noted above, military pay for 

Vietnam-era draftees was substantially below the amount 

that most inductees could have earned in the private sector. When the military moved from the draft to the AVF 

in the mid-1970s, basic pay for first-term personnel was 

roughly doubled to attract volunteers. Today, DoD’s policies continue to emphasize having military pay be comparable to the earnings of similarly qualified civilians.100

Instead, lawmakers could choose to hold basic pay fixed 

and allow its value to erode with inflation (to realize some 

savings), or they could opt to explicitly cut basic pay (for 

larger savings). 

A cut in basic pay would most likely affect all four 

branches of the military, which have long shared the same 

basic-pay table (going back to the most recent draft era). 

For 2007, the four services have budgeted a total of 

nearly $6 billion for basic pay for active-duty personnel 

in the three lowest pay grades (E-1 to E-3), which 

roughly correspond to the first two years of service. That 

sum represents an upper bound on possible savings from 

cutting basic pay for first-term personnel.101 (Because 

volunteers would continue to hold the more senior positions in a mixed draft/volunteer force, few options might 

be available to reduce the pay of personnel with more 

than two years of service.)

Savings on Recruiting. In 2006, the Army spent 

$353 million on enlistment bonuses, $583 million on 

recruiting and advertising, and another $700 million on 

98. The General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) conducted several studies estimating the budgetary 

costs and savings of moving to a draft force in the 1980s. As 

detailed in one of those studies, The Military Draft: Potential 

Impacts and Other Issues (March 1988), returning to a draft could 

generate either net savings or net costs depending on the assumptions used in analyzing the issue. 

99. DoD makes payments from its military personnel appropriation 

into the Military Retirement Fund; those payments are calculated 

to accrue into a sum sufficient to fund future military retirement 

pay. The accrual (or “normal”) rates could be reduced if fewer soldiers were expected to complete 20-year careers and thus qualify 

for regular (nondisability) retirement. However, a technical problem would arise because currently, the normal rates are the same 

for the active components of all four services, whereas a draft 

Army would experience the largest reduction in seniority. Similarly, DoD pays into the Medicare Eligible Retiree Health Care 

Fund to finance future health care costs of military retirees and 

their family members who are also eligible for Medicare (generally 

those at least age 65). The health care accrual rates could also be 

reduced, but the same technical issues would arise.

100. DoD’s goal is that regular military compensation for enlisted 

personnel be at least equal to the 70th percentile of earnings for 

civilians of comparable age, education, and experience. According to DoD officials, the department has achieved that goal and 

is requesting a 3 percent increase in military basic pay in its 

2008 budget to keep pace with private-sector wage growth. See 

the statement of David S.C. Chu, Under Secretary of Defense 

for Personnel and Readiness, Thomas F. Hall, Assistant Secretary 

of Defense for Reserve Affairs, and Stephen L. Jones, Principal 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, before 

the Subcommittee on Personnel of the Senate Armed Services 

Committee, March 28, 2007.

101. Even if budgetary savings were realized, some people drafted 

into the military would not have been willing to serve voluntarily at those reduced pay levels. Those draftees would effectively 

be paying the in-kind tax described earlier.
36 THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE

pay and benefits for recruiters. Because it would probably 

still need some volunteers, the Army would be unlikely to 

eliminate enlistment bonuses or advertising under a draft. 

Nevertheless, those spending levels represent upper 

bounds on the possible savings on recruiting.102

As described above, the larger number of annual Army 

accessions necessary under a draft would require greater 

spending on military entrance-processing stations. The 

Army spent $134 million on those stations in 2006.103

CBO’s draft scenarios involve up to a doubling of annual 

Army accessions. Annual costs for entrance processing 

would probably not double, however, because some portion of those costs are fixed and thus are unaffected by 

relatively small changes in the number of personnel who 

enter the service.

Costs of Training. Higher Army accessions would also 

increase both the variable and fixed costs of training personnel. Costs that vary directly with the number of trainees include the number of instructors required. Fixed 

costs include the costs of training ranges and schools, 

which would not vary with small changes in the number 

of trainees but would require expansion under a large 

change. CBO estimates that reinstating a draft under the 

scenarios above could result in additional costs of 

$150 million to $650 million for initial and occupational 

training and for construction and operation of barracks. 

Effective Time for Draftees to Be Available for 

Deployment

Aside from the larger number of accessions and less senior 

force implied by a draft, there are concerns about how 

long draftees would be available for deployment. On 

entering the military, new recruits receive individual basic 

training (boot camp) and occupational training before 

being assigned to a unit. A unit nearing its deployment 

time also takes part in a series of collective training 

events, ranging from small-team training to battalion-size 

unit training. For occupations in combat-related fields, 

such as infantry and air defense, individual basic and 

occupational training lasts between 3.5 months and 

7 months.104 Unit training requires another 6 months, 

CBO estimates. Thus, allowing one month for transit 

(and assuming that training for recruits and units could 

be scheduled efficiently to minimize time spent waiting 

for training), CBO estimates that it would take 10.5 

months to 14 months after recruits entered the military 

before they would be fully trained and available for 

deployment.

Those times would be identical for draftees and volunteers.105 However, because draftees are assumed to serve 

for two years (as prescribed in current law), some inductees assigned to occupations that required the longer training times would not be available for a full one-year 

deployment. That limitation would exacerbate problems 

for the Army, which recently increased the typical deployment length from 12 months to 15 months. Personnel in 

the AVF, by comparison, serve longer terms and can be 

deployed for longer intervals—or multiple times during 

a single enlistment contract—for most occupational 

specialties. 

Equity Considerations

In CBO’s draft scenarios, no more than 165,000 young 

people would be drafted annually. That number represents only a small portion of the recruit-age population in 

the United States—about 2 million young men turn 18 

each year, and the total (male and female) population 

between the ages of 18 and 24 numbers roughly 30 million. Given that relatively few individuals would need to 

be drafted, who should be inducted to ensure that the 

system was equitable? 

102. CBO’s illustrative draft scenarios apply only to the Army. What 

effect such a draft would have on the recruiting success of the 

other services is difficult to estimate. On the one hand, any 

reduction in basic pay for first-term personnel would adversely 

affect recruiting by the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy. On 

the other hand, as was the case during the Vietnam War, some 

young people would probably prefer to enlist in the other services rather than be drafted, in hopes of securing a military 

occupation that deployed less frequently or that avoided frontline combat units. CBO has not tried to estimate the net effect 

of an Army draft on recruiting by the other services or the extra 

resources that those services would need to spend (or could save) 

to counteract the cross-service effect.

103. The Army serves as the executive agent in charge of entrance 

processing for the other services, so part of its $134 million cost 

is attributable to that role.

104. Durations of basic and occupational training for various enlisted 

Army occupations are available at http://usmilitary.about.com/

od/enlistedjobs/Enlisted_Job_Descriptions_and_Qualification_ 

Factors.htm or at www.goarmy.com (under the Careers & Jobs 

tab).

105. That estimate excludes any time that volunteers may spend in 

the delayed-entry pool before reporting for basic training.
THE ALL-VOLUNTEER MILITARY: ISSUES AND PERFORMANCE 37

The random lottery required by current law would seem 

to yield a representative cross section of young men. 

However, the remaining system of exemptions or deferments would affect the representativeness of young people serving in the military. All of those aspects of current 

draft law would require legislation to change.

Presumably, lawmakers would want to avoid the public 

dissatisfaction and mistrust that was evident during some 

of the nation’s previous experiences with conscription. 

However, if DoD had a ready supply of high-quality 

personnel available through the draft, it might wish to 

tighten AFQT standards. Alternatively, the nation might 

consider certain civilian occupations or activities of such 

importance for domestic health and security that people 

engaged in them could be exempt from military service. 

Such actions, however, would most likely affect the representativeness of draftees.

Another equity-related consideration is the role of 

women in the military. A draft that was instituted under 

current law would cause the percentage of women in the 

services to decline (assuming that women did not volunteer at greater rates than in the recent past). Some observers might argue for legislation that would broaden the 

draft to include the registration and induction of women, 

despite existing restrictions that bar women from serving 

in units primarily engaged in ground combat.