Working Paper: NBER ID: w16408
Authors: John Cawley; Johanna Catherine Maclean
Abstract: Excess body weight or body fat hinders performance of military duties. As a result, the U.S. military has weight-for-height and percent body fat standards for enlistment. This paper estimates the number and percent of military-age civilians who meet, and do not meet, the current active duty enlistment standards for weight and body fat for the four major armed services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps), using data from the full series of National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys that spans 1959-2008. We find that the percent of civilian military-age men and women who satisfy current military enlistment standards for weight-for-height and percent body fat has fallen considerably. This is due to a large increase in the percentage who are both overweight and overfat, which roughly doubled for men and more than tripled for women between 1959-62 and 2007-08. As of 2007-08, 5.7 million men (11.70%) and 16.5 million women (34.65%) of military age exceed the U.S. Army's enlistment standards for weight-for-height and percent body fat. The implications of rising obesity for the U.S. military are especially acute given its recent difficulties in recruiting a sufficient number of new high quality service members in the midst of combat operations overseas.
Keywords: Obesity; Military Recruitment; Health Standards; Body Fat; BMI
JEL Codes: H56; I1; J0; J11; J4; N32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Rising obesity (I14) | Decrease in percentage of military-age civilians meeting enlistment standards (H56) |
| Rising obesity (I14) | Increase in number of military-age men exceeding enlistment standards (H56) |
| Rising obesity (I14) | Increase in number of military-age women exceeding enlistment standards (H56) |
| Socioeconomic factors (P23) | Likelihood of meeting enlistment standards (I19) |