THE ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE IN THE 1970S

Objective. We view military recruitment as a labor market process in o rder to explore characteristics of the young men who served during the first years of the all-volunteer force, and the differences between t hose who served as officers and those who served as enlisted personnel . We pay special attention to the intersection of race and social stat us. Methods. We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 to test a series of hypotheses in terms of b oth univariate relationships and multivariate models. Results. During the early years of the volunteer military, young men who served did no t represent an underclass, but came from somewhat lower socioeconomic backgrounds and had somewhat lower levels of high school academic perf ormance than those who did not serve. Blacks were overrepresented amon g those who served, but we do not find evidence of the military ''crea ming'' the best of young black males. Rather, we find some evidence of ''dredging'' white males who did less well academically than their no nserving peers. Intent to serve while still in high school was a stron g predictor of actual service. Those who served as officers had higher academic performance in high school and came from higher socioeconomi c status backgrounds than those who served as enlisted personnel. In t he early years of the volunteer force, blacks were underrepresented in the officer corps.