Woher kommen die Freiwilligen? - am Bsp. der USA

[schlammtreiber]

Auf Foreign Policy habe ich folgenden sehr interessanten Artikel zur Zusammensetzung, Herkunft, Sozialstruktur etc der US-Streitkräfte gefunden:

Uncle Sam Wants Who?
The real reasons people join the military
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/07/31/uncle_sam_wants_who?page=full

Natürlich nicht übertragbar auf die deutschen Verhältnisse, aber sehr interessant trotzdem, weil einige übliche Vorurteile mit der harten Realität konfrontiert werden.

Die Ungebildeten landen bei der Army?

Today's military personnel are more likely than comparable age groups in the civilian population to have graduated from high school (after all, with rare exceptions, military recruits must have high school degrees or GEDs). Military officers, meanwhile, are substantially better educated than civilians: Only 30 percent of the overall population over age 25 have bachelor's degrees, compared to 82.5 percent of officers.

Die Armen gehen aus dem Ghetto zur Army?

Today's military is distinctly middle class. In part, this is because military requirements render many of the nation's poorest young people ineligible: The poorest Americans are the least likely to finish high school or gain a GED, for instance, and poverty also correlates with ill health, obesity, and the likelihood of serious run-ins with the criminal justice system, all of which are disqualifying factors for the military.

Nach dem Militärdienst kommt der soziale Abstieg?

That said, the military remains an important source of upward mobility for many Americans, and particularly for women and minorities. Contrary to much popular mythology about dysfunctional vets, most veterans do pretty well economically -- better than comparable non-veterans. Overall, veterans are less likely than non-veterans to be unemployed, less likely than non-veterans to live below the poverty line, and veterans have higher median incomes than non-veterans.

G.I.s sind rechts/konservativ?

Overall, he found that social and political attitudes of Army personnel track fairly closely with the views of the civilian population. On certain issues, Army personnel are in fact decidedly more liberal the general population: in 2004 (the most recent year for which there is hard data), for instance, civilians were substantially more likely than Army personnel to oppose abortion under all circumstances, and large majorities of Army personnel supported increasing domestic government spending on education, health care, Social Security, and environmental protection....

Es lohnt sich also durchaus, den Artikel zu lesen und auch den Links zu folgen.

[christoph1972]

Ich wäre gespannt, welches Ergebnis eine vergleichbare Studie in der Bundeswehr ergeben würde.