Rising obesity rates may hamper military recruiting

Real Time Economics:

The rising U.S. obesity rate is often cited as a top concern for health care, but a new paper says it may be cause for alarm in military recruiting.

Cornell University’s John Cawley and Johanna Catherine Maclean look at the problems created by obesity in their paper “Unfit for Service: The Implications of Rising Obesity for U.S. Military Recruitment” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. They note that as of 2007-08, 5.7 million men, or some 12%, and 16.5 million women — about 35% — of military age exceed the U.S. Army’s enlistment standards for weight-for-height and percent body fat. That’s more than double the level from 1959-1962 for men and more than triple the level for women.

“The implications of rising obesity for the U.S. military are especially acute given its recent difficulties in recruiting a sufficient number of new high-quality service members in the midst of combat operations overseas,” Cawley and Maclean said. They note that the problem could be exacerbated if the U.S. were forced by wartime demands to move back to a draft.

Possible solutions are complicated. “A simplistic response is to relax the enlistment standards to allow heavier and fatter recruits into the military. However, high weight and body fat have been linked to worse job performance in military occupations, and cost the military billions in job absenteeism and health care spending,” the authors write.

If obesity rates continue to increase, Cawley and Maclean suggest that the military may have to turn to other potential solutions, such as moving further toward capital investments such as unmanned drones or outsourcing to private military companies that can recruit from broader, international labor pools.