Propensity to serve and motivation to enlist among American combat soldiers

Propensity to serve in the military expressed by high school seniors has been shown to be a strong predictor of actual service. Among male high school seniors, 70 percent of those who express high desire or likelihood of service actually enter the military within six years of high school graduation. Propensity to serve has been declining among American youth, and there are not sufficient high-propensity youth to meet manpower needs, so low-propensity youth must be recruited as well. In this article, we explore the relationship between propensity and motivation to enlist in a sample of enlisted combat soldiers in the U.S. Army. We provide an analysis of motivational data that tests Moskos's institutional and occupational models of service and find the organization of motivations to be more complex than Moskos's dichotomous conceptualization. We find that those soldiers who reported high enlistment propensity before beginning service reported significant institutional motivations to join and plans for a military career. Enlistment propensity was not significantly related to occupational or pecuniary motivations.