As a first approximation from a quick google search, approximately 2.75% of US children are born to one or more parents who are in the military. This was not hard information to find, but I can't vouch for its veracity; the language used is sloppy and without sources.
A bunch of pages all say the same line that 100,000 children are born each year to "military families", or about 1.5 million between 2003 and 2016. Google also says that about 3.65 million children are born in the US each year. I used division to reach the percentage. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it gives us some idea.
As to your wider point, the idea that you as an American have been unable to find this information and therefore anyone who is not American cannot have a valid observation of the issue because they are missing this critical info is less than useful.
Well, members of Congress and their children are still something like ten times as likely to have served in the armed forces than the general population.
>> the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees.
>> There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized.
Have you looked at what US Army privates are actually paid? And I can tell you that there will be LOTS of single-parent households too. Lots of drug addicted parents/kids. The army isn't what it seen in the recruiting posters. it is a large community of young people with basically the same problems as any other group. There are some differences, parents are generally "employed", but there are also specific difficulties like absent mother/fathers and near-constant movements to new schools as young parents bounce between postings.
I suspect that's the number with military backed out. But even that isn't the right thing to do because the military is essentially a big employment program.
The claim here is that the military families are /so much more stable/ that it explains their kids (collectively) performing better than every other state in the country.
Obviously the military provides some sort of economic lower bound. But it also applies a pretty harsh upper bound, and has all sorts of other effects that you would expect to push the mean down.
That doesn't match recruitment data for the US Army. We have a volunteer professional military with standards for recruitment that require above average individuals.
There are still plenty of poor people in the Army, quite frankly I can't think of anything better for poor people. Where else can you get housed and fed and your college paid for? Only a small portion of the military is war fighters. Most are doing boring relatively safe jobs like filling gas tanks and counting bullets.
"Enlisted recruits in 2006 and 2007 came primarily from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds. Low-income neighborhoods were underrepresented among enlisted troops, while middle-class and high-income neighborhoods were overrepresented." [0]
"Military recruits mirror the U.S. population and are solidly middle class.
A recent report shows that more recruits come from middle-income families, with far fewer drawn from poorer families. Youth from upper-income families are represented at almost exactly their fair share."
Your source is inaccurate because it's for enlisted only. Upper class are far more likely to be officers or warrant officers.
My point stands: upper class serve more than lower class.
It would be interesting to see how many of the remaining 23% are in the slice of society where a military career makes financial sense. When I joined the Army I was going from having been fired from McD's last month to making $1K a month with food and shelter taken care of. That made sense at the time. My kid is plenty skinny, mentally stable, and drug free, but he's also a successful college student and budding entrepreneur, so he's not going to be wearing a uniform unless we go full WW3 conscription.
There's a common misconception that the US volunteer military is only poor people.
Surprisingly enough, the top US income quartile enlists at a higher rate than the bottom income quartile. There's a big list of things that disqualify recruits, not having basic literacy, no recent prison time, no high school dropouts, obesity standards, mental health standards, no marijuanas use, no children...
Firstly, I wasn't making that claim. Secondly, that claim is easily falsifiable. The majority of the American military actual comes from middle-class households.
"Most members of the military come from middle-class neighborhoods. The middle three quintiles for household income were overrepresented among enlisted recruits"[1]
When you look at the educational attainment of those recruits, it erodes your claim. Just talk to some of them and you'll see there's virtually as many reasons for joining as there are recruits. The idea that there is one path for the college-bound (e.g., attending straight out of high school) is probably a contributor to some of the problems we see in college.
The minimum ASVAB to enlist is 31, and there are waiver programs for that. This is not a good showing. I feel like people don't appreciate how little lower-enlisted people are paid, what terrible financial literacy abounds in the ranks, and how many kids live on base but are still very firmly living in poverty.
There are a lot of advantages to living on base, but this thread is pretending that the military has its shit together in ways that it absolutely does not. "All the kids will be well-fed and socialized" is bizarrely out of touch, specifically. There are functioning gangs on some larger military installations. Troops PCS every few years, making it difficult for kids to establish social groups. Most bases have a unit of MPs basically acting as child services.
I'd think a better place to look for filters would be entire schools -- BRAC has caused the closure of many schools, but I don't know how they select which schools to target for closure. I know of at least two larger bases which have no schools (students are bused to local civilian schools) but I know others who have kept their schools despite a lower overall population of families.
As a military brat who rarely spent more than two years in a given location, I wonder if there is any data pertinent to my case. Anecdotally my peer group largely out-earned their parents, but that is not really what's being addressed here.
> the military is primarily poor and filled with minorities
I haven't found the numbers for economic background prior to joining, but with respect to minorities. The US military is around 75% white. They are underrepresented versus the population as a whole, but still make up a significant chunk of the military.
At least circa 2008, people from lower class (financial) backgrounds were underrepresented versus their middle class and upper class peers in the US military.
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This doesn't mean that minorities and the poor aren't targeted for enlistment. They almost certainly are, but by the raw numbers, they aren't filling the military.
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