Determinants of Military Manpower Supply

Abstract

This chapter provides the first empirically based, systematic overview of factors affecting military propensity and military enlistment in Germany. It includes a wide range of analyses of socio-demographic factors that are assumed to have a predictive relationship with the propensity for military service and actual military service as regular or professional soldier and basic military service conscript. Based on a theoretical framework of the enlistment decision and a conceptual overview of this conversion process that transforms potential manpower supply into actual military enlistees, the chapter provides multivariate regression estimates, calculated separately for Germany, East Germany, and West Germany, and sample size permitting, for males and females. The estimates are based on representative survey data. When exploring factors correlated with plans for military service, a 2006 national youth opinion poll about the security political situation in Germany is used. Data for the analyses of actual military service are drawn from the pooled 1998–2005 Microcensus Scientific Use Files. In view of the consistent pattern of results, it appears that factors that influence youth’s initial interest in joining the military likewise control subsequent occupational decision-making regarding military service. In conclusion of the chapter, the established relations are related to the demographic changes underway in Germany.