It seems that often political campaigns will turn to ‘he lied about his military service’ type statements. If I wanted to run, I wouldn’t have this problem, as I have NO military service. How common is military service, and should it be considered an unofficial prerequisite for public office? Or could I make a good point on the campaign trail saying: “like most of the population of the United States, I have never been in the military”?
The U.S. 2000 census identified an adult civilian population of 201 million; of these, 25 million were “civilian veterans,” i.e. no longer on active duty. There are also 750,000 military personnel on active duty. Indeed, most Americans have never served.
How about “What percentage of the US population has served in the military broken down by age, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, education, etc. ?” That would be interesting.
Yeah, as a partial answer (ethnic and gender), I present to you the following.
This site has 1999 census data as such:
Blacks - 35.1M, 13%
Hispanics - 31.7M, 11.7%
Asian/Pacific Islanders - 10.9M, 4%
Total Minority - 77.7M, 28.8%
White (extrapolated) - 192.3M (71.2%)
Total would be 270M
This site has the breakdown of minorities in the Active Military Service in Sep 2000. I am counting Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Blacks - 272,818 (20.1%)
Hispanics - 107,556 (7.9%)
Other - 85,038 (6.3%)
White (extrapolated) - 889,416 (65.6%)
Total Minority - 465,412 (34.4%)
Total Military- 1,354,828 (not, 750,000)
Percentage of Ethnic Category that have served?
Unknown, not enough data.
Mucking about on this site tells you there are 25,054,402 Veterans out of the 200,952,788 Civilians over 18, or 12.5%. Of the people of Voting Age (and Miltary Age) in 1998, the breakdown is
White - 83.7% (168,197,483)
Black - 11.8% (23,712,429)
Other - 4.5% (9,042,875)
Hispanic (Hispanic may be any race) - 9.9% (19,894,326)
Yes I know this does not add up, it is the Goverment)
Percentage of Ethnic Category serving at any one time (People of Voting Age)
Black - 272,818/23,712,429 (1.15%)
Hispanic - 107,556/19,894,326 (0.54%)
Other (take the leap with me) - 85,038/9,042,875 (0.94%)
White - 889,416/168,197,483 (0.52%)
Total - 1,354,828/200,952,788 (0.67%)
If I wanted to take the snapshot of Active and Veteran presented here, 26,409,230 total, divided by the population over 18 presented here, 200,952,788, then 13.1% of the eligible population is or has been in the miltary.
GENDER
There are still 200,952,788 folks over 18, and 51.8% are female, 48.2% male. I would do more, but I’m tired.
There were 199,650 females in the Active Armed Services as of Apr 2001, out of 1,354,828 folks, or 14.7% of the Armed Forces.
51.8% of 200,952,788 is 104,093,544 females 18 or over. 199,650 of them, or 0.19% were Active Duty.
These snapshots were taken at different times of course, but I would bet the stats today are very similar to what is above.