Race and Gender Attitudes and Propensity to Serve in the All-Volunteer Military, 1976–2019

In this paper we examine the changing relationships between racial and gender attitudes and propensity to join the military among more than 40 cohorts of high school seniors since the advent of the All-Volunteer Force, asking whether and how gender and racial attitudes are associated with propensity to serve in the military. We use data from Monitoring the Future (MTF), a survey administered to a nationally representative sample of high school students from 1976-present. MTF data offer the unique ability to understand the gender and racial attitudes among youth with a propensity towards military service and to compare them against those not inclined to serve. The long time series also affords the opportunity to examine how the changing social and historical context shapes the relationship between race and gender attitudes and desire to serve in the military over more than four decades of the AVF. Among high school seniors, propensity to serve in the military is associated with less tolerant racial views before enlistment. It would appear that the military attracts those with less tolerant race attitudes, especially among Whites. Differences by military propensity in gender views are less pronounced. Although interracial contact prior to enlistment is associated with more tolerant attitudes in general, military propensed youth have higher levels of contact pre-enlistment and yet also less positive racial sentiment.