America's Military Population

Military service is not necessarily a safe occupation even in peacetime. In most years, more than one-half of active-duty fatalities, and in some years as many as two-thirds of such fatalities, are attributable to accidents-primarily vehicle and training accidents. Far fewer fatalities are attributed to illness. On average, 18 percent of active-duty fatalities each year are due to illness, with relatively little variation.

More than 100 military personnel take their own lives each year. When the armed forces were larger, the number exceeded 200 each year, although there is considerable annual variation.9 In the early 1980s, about 10 percent of military fatalities were self-inflicted. Military suicides rose in the late 1980s and peaked in the mid-1990s at a rate more than double that of the early 1980s. Some analysts have attributed the increase in the 1980s in part to the Army's experimental unit manning system, which made personnel management much more rigid and was accompanied by an increase in stress-related symptoms.10 The continued increase in suicides in the 1990s might have been affected by an increase in the rate of peacekeeping deployments after the end of the Cold War in Europe, resulting in increased family separations. The military suicide rate declined initially in 2001 and 2002, to about 11 percent, which is well below the rate for civilians of comparable ages. But the suicide rate did not recede to the level of the early 1980s; in fact it appears to have risen again during the military campaign in Iraq. In 2003, at least 22 service members committed suicide in Iraq alone.11 This represented about 14 percent of the non-hostile fire deaths in Iraq. Suicides accounted for 13.5 percent of deaths in the Army. Even with this recent increase, suicides represent a similar percentage of deaths in the military as among American civilians ages 20 to 34, which in 2000 was 14.6 percent of deaths among men, and 6.8 percent of deaths among women.

Homicides in the military are relatively low, around 5 percent of all military deaths-less than half the rate accounted for by suicide. In contrast, homicide is a major cause of death among young African American men in civilian life-accounting for 35 percent of deaths to African American civilian men ages 20 to 34 in 2000, and 11 percent of deaths among African American civilian women in this age group. The comparable 2000 figures for whites were 8 percent for men and 6 percent for women. African Americans face a lower risk of homicide in the military than in civilian life.

Retirement and Separation

Although it is common to refer to America's volunteer military as a career force, only a minority remain in service for a full military career. Even a full military career is relatively short by civilian standards. Because the history of the American military was one of mobilization and demobilization, there was no comprehensive military retirement system until fairly recently. Prior to the Civil War, the military benefit system was restricted to men who had been mobilized for war and who had participated in combat and had service-related disabilities. The number of benefit recipients was very small. This changed as the large generation of Civil War veterans became a very powerful political lobby in the postwar years, and the definition of war-related disability was broadened. In 1890, a new Civil War disability pension act was passed, extending benefits to veterans of the Union army or navy who had served for 90 days, had been honorably discharged, and subsequently had become disabled. In 1906, attainment of age 62 was legislatively defined as a disability within the intent of the pension laws, providing old-age insurance for almost 760,000 former military personnel.12 However, aside from disabilities, variously defined, the actual retirement rolls remained fairly small.