Why We Fight: Understanding Military Participation Over the Life Cycle (Journal Article)

This article specifies a dynamic career decision model that includes military service options to understand how human capital, compensation, the business cycle, and combat risk affect the military labor supply. Using data on males from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, experimental results show that the military wage elasticity of military participation is 3 percent, entering the workforce during an adverse business cycle state increases military participation by 3 percent, and combat death risk strongly affects military participation.