CORRELATIONS BETWEEN LOCAL HEALTH CONDITIONS AND MILITARY ACCESSIONS

This thesis studies the correlation between annual military accessions and local disease burden using county-level data from 2016 to 2019. One of the biggest challenges the military faces today is maintaining a healthy, professional, and strong military appropriately equipped—mentally, physically, and emotionally—to complete assigned missions and tasks. The worsening prevalence of obesity and other underlying diseases in the civilian population significantly affects the total number of successful military accessions each year, primarily due to the U.S. military force consisting of mostly young adults. To better understand how the variations in disease burdens affects military accessions, I measure local disease burdens using health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, mental health, and vision defects, and military accessions for all services at the county level. In my results, I find that the military mainly draws its accessions from unhealthier parts of the United States even after controlling for differences in income and education across counties. Therefore, my findings indicate that the military still draws many of its accessions from parts of the county with worse underlying disease burdens. These findings have important implications for future medical policy design and entry into the U.S. military. ; Approved for public release. distribution is unlimited ; Lieutenant, United States Navy ; http://archive.org/details/correlationsbetw1094567107