Who volunteers for the volunteer Army?

In a New York Review of Books essay, Michael Massing  writes that the population segment most exciting to the Army is working-class youth who want to go to college but can’t afford the rapidly rising tuition and board costs.

Bribes — more commonly known as signing bonuses — are “one of the main reasons why the Army has been able to meet its recruiting goals in spite of the ongoing
specter of serving in Iraq,” Massing writes. “Another is the relaxation of admission standards. In 2007, 11 percent of all new recruits received ‘moral waivers’ for being in trouble with the law — double the proportion in 2003. Over that same period, the proportion of enlistees who had finished high school fell from 90 to 71 percent — the lowest level in 25 years…

“Still, from the survey data, and from my interviews, it seems clear that the military does not consist of society’s ‘dregs.’ Rather, it consists mainly of young men and women who, raised in working- and lower middle-class families, yearn to make it into the middle class. Unable to achieve this in the hyper-competitive and expensive market economy, they have instead sought to achieve it in the Army. With its guarantees of housing, employment, health insurance, and educational assistance, the U.S. military today seems the last outpost of the welfare state in America.”