Contextual Effects of Military Presence on Women's Earnings

Armed Forces & Society

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 25-51

  Booth, Bradford ^a  

^a ICF INTERNATIONAL   (United States)

Author keywords

discipline based; generic; mentoring; study skills

Indexed keywords

EID: 2142727356     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X0303000102     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. Bradford Booth, William W. Falk. David R. Segal, and Mady Wechsler Segal, “The Impact of Military Presence in Local Labor Markets on the Employment of Women.” Gender and Society 14, 2 (2000): 318–322. For a discussion of labor market area geography, see
2. Joachim Singelmann and Forrest Deseran (eds.), Inequalities in Labor Market Areacs (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, (1993); and
3. Charles M. Tolbert. John Beggs, and Gerry Boudreaux, PUMS-L Data and Associated Files: CD-ROM Edition (Prepared by the Louisiana Population Data Center, Louisiana State University and LSU Agricultural Center.) (Baton Rouge, LA: The Center, (1995).
4. Booth et al., “Military Presence.” Both the cited study and the present paper use the Department of Labor definition of unemployment: those who have no job but who want to work, and are thus still considered part of the labor force. Retirees, children under 16, discouraged workers, and others without paid jobs who are not seeking work are not considered part of the labor force by this definition.
5. Reynolds Farley and William Frey, “Changes in the Segregation of Whites from Blacks: Small Steps Toward a More Integrated Society,” American Sociological Retiesv 59, 1 (1994): 23–45.
6. Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000);
7. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You:. The Militarisation of Women's Lives (Boston, MA: South End Press, (1983).
8. Booth et al., “Military Presence.”
9. Ted K. Bradshaw, “Communities not Fazed: Why Military Base Closures Might Not be Catastrophic,” Journal of the American Planning Association 65, 2 (1999): 193–206;
10. Mark A. Hooker and Michael Knetter, “Measuring the Effects of Military Base Closures,” Economic Inquiry 39, 4 (2001): 583–598.
11. Edward S. Shihadeh, “The Prevalence of Husband-Centered Migration: Employment Consequences for Married Mothers,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 53 (1991): 432–444;
12. Joyce P. Jacobsen and Laurence M. Levin, “Marriage and Migration: Comparing Gains and Loses from Migration for Couples and Singles,” Social Science Quarterly 78, 3 (1997): 688–709;
13. Daniel T. Lichter, “Socioeconomic Returns to Migration Among Married Women,” Social Forces 62, 2 (1983): 487–503.
14. For example, see Deborah M. Payne, John T. Warner, and Roger D. Little, “Tied Migration and Returns to Human Capital: The Case of Military Wives,” Social Science Quarterly 73 (1992): 324–339;
15. H. Leroy Gill, Donald R. Haurin, and Jeff Phillips, “Mobility and Fertility in the Military,” Social Science Quarterly 75, 2 (1994): 340–353;
16. Hyder Lakhani, “The Socioeconomic Benefits to Military Families of Homebasing of Armed Forces,” Armed Forces and Society 21 (Fall (1994): 113–128.
17. Payne et al., “Tied Migration.”
18. Sue Shellenbarger, “Armed Forces Try to Treat Work Woes of Military Spouses,” The Wall Street Journal (January 16, 2002).
19. J. Brad Schwartz, Lisa L. Wood and Janet Griffith, “The Impact of Military Life on Spouse Labor Force Outcomes,” Armed Forces and Society 17, 3 (1991): 385–406;
20. Gill et al., “Mobility in the Military”
21. Lakahni, “Benefits of Homebasing Armed Forces.”
22. Arne L. Kalleberg and Aage B. Sorensen, “The Sociology of Labor Markets,” Annual Review of Sociology 5 (1979): 351–379.
23. Barbara Kilbourne, Paula England, and Kurt Beron, “Effects of Individual, Occupational, and Industrial Characteristics on Earnings: Intersections of Race and Gender,” Social Forces 72, 4 (1994): 1149–1176;
24. Singelmann and Deseran, Inequalities in Labor Market Areas.
25. Barbara Reskin, “Sex Segregation in the Workplace,” Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 241–270;
26. Jerry Jacobs and Mary Blair-Loy, “Gender, Race, Local Labor Markets and Occupational Devaluation,” Sociological Focus 29, 3 (1996): 209–232.
27. Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Sex and Advantage: A Comparative, Macro-Structural Theorv of Sex Stratification (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984);
28. David A. Cotter, JoAnn DeFiore, Joan M. Hermsen, Brenda Marsteller Kowalewski, and Reeve Vanneman, “The Demand for Female Labor,” American Journal of Sociology 103, 6 (1998): 1673–1712.
29. Philip Cohen. “Black Concentration Effects on Black-White and Gender Inequality: Multi-Level Analysis for U.S. Metropolitan Areas.” Social Forces 77. 1 (1998): 207–229;
30. William W. Falk and Thomas A. Lyson, High-Tech, Lowt-Tech, No Tech:. Recent Industrial aind Occupational Change in the South. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, (1998):
31. Singelmann and Deseran, Inequalities in Labor Market Areas.
32. Cynthia B. Costello. Shari Miles, and Anne J. Stone, eds., The American Woman:. 1999-2000 (New York: W.W. Norton. 1998);
33. Women's Research and Education Institute (WREI). Women in the Military: Statistical Update (Washington, DC: WREI. (2000).
34. Robert Bunting, Employer Concentration in Local Labor Markets (Chapel Hill. NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1962);
35. Lawrnce W. Boyd. “The Economics ot the Coal Company Town: Institutional Relationships, Monopsony, and Distributional Conflicts in American Coal Towns,” (included in summaries of dissertations) Jlonno of Econonici Histors 54 (1994): 426–427.
36. William Boal and Michael R. Ransom, “Monopsony in the Labor Market,” Journal ot Economic Literature 35 (1997): 86–112.
37. Joan Robinson, The Economnics of hilerje(t Competition. (London: Macmillan. (1969).
38. Boal and Ransom. “Monopsony in the Labor Market,” 86–86.
39. Gary L. Bowen and Dennis K. Orthner, eds., The Organization Family: Woink and Fainils' Linkages in the U.S. Militanr (New York: Praeger. 1989).
40. U.S. Department of Defense, A New Social Compact (Washington. DC: Office of Military Community and Family Policy. 2002).
41. Jacksonville, North Carolina is an example. Jacksonville contains within its commuting boundaries at least two major military installations: Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base and the New River Marine Corps Air Station. Together, these bases employ over 45,000 active-duty Marines and an additional 4,800 civilian personnel. Additionally, nearly 60,000 military family members reside in the Jacksonville area. William R. Evinger, Directors of U.S. Militars Bases Worldwide (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. 1995).
42. Falk and Lyson, High-Tech, Low Tech. No Tech.
43. Arne L. Kalleberg, Barbara F. Reskin, and Ken Hudson, “Bad Jobs in America: Standard and Non-Standard Employment Relations and Job Quality in the United States.” American Sociological Revliew 65, 2 (2000): 256–278.
44. Margaret C. Harrell, Ins isible Women: Junior Enlisted Arnmv Wile.s (Santa Monica. CA: RAND Corporation, 2000);
45. Janet D. Griffith, Leslie S. Stewart, and Emily D. Cato, Arnnv Famnilies: A Report on Arms' Spouses and Families in 1987 (Research Triangle Park. NC: Research Triangle Institute. (1988).
46. Tolbert et al. PUMS-L Data and Associated Files.
47. Christopher Winship and Larry Radbill, “Sampling Weights and Regression Analysis,” Sociological Metho(ds and Research 23. 2 (1994): 230–257.
48. U.S. Census of Population and Housing, Public Use Microdata Sample: Technical Documentation (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1990), B-16. Of the total sample, a small number of respondents (less than 1%) were removed from the analysis either because of negative values on the earnings variable, or values of zero on the variable representing years of education. Those with reported earnings of $0 and above have had $1.00 added to their earnings so that the natural log could be obtained.
49. The effect of military presence on women's earnings persists when only full-time workers (35 hours per week or more) are included in the analyses.
50. Michelle J. Budig and Paula England. “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” American Sociological Review 66, 2 (2001): 204–225.
51. Nan L. Maxwell, “Economic Returns to Migration: Marital Status and Gender Differences,” Social Science Quarterly 69 (1988): 108–121.
52. All LMA-level measures are aggregated from data on individual respondents and were calculated using the total number of labor force participants male and female in the PUMS-L sample that had non-missing values on the 1990 Census variable R LABOR (n = 545,989).
53. Regional concentration is a characteristic that the military shares with many industries within the U.S. economy, such as mining, agriculture, and automobile production.
54. Social scientists routinely relax the assumption of normality with regard to independent variables in regression if sample sizes are large however, a log linear transformation of the military presence variable was constructed in order to gauge the effects of an alternative measure with a less skewed distribution. Though the log of military presence did indeed improve the distribution of the variable, the distribution still did not approach normality, and comparisons of the effects of standardized betas of both measures on standardized dependent variables did not differ substantially in either the significance or magnitude of the effects.
55. Philip Cohen, “Black Concentration Effects.”
56. Proportion service is composed of all occupations defined as service by the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) used in the 1990 Census, with the exception of public service occupations such as those serving in fire and police departments. The measure also includes retail sales and cashier occupations from the technical/sales occupational sector. The measure approximates the local concentration of dead-end jobs, many of which have both male and female incumbents.
57. Anthony S. Byrk and Stephen W. Raudenbush, Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992).
58. For the intercept (foj) to reflect the average earnings of a white worker living in a market without a military presence, it is necessary to leave the race, ethnicity, and military presence variables uncentered.
59. While it would have been advantageous to allow the slope for the military wife measure to vary randomly in order to measure specifically the effect of military presence on the earnings of military wives, the small number of military spouses in most LMAs precluded this decision due to low reliability estimates. Thus the variance of this measure had to remain “fixed” across LMAs.
60. The intercept reported in Table 3 is higher than that shown in Table 2 because of the decision to leave the race and ethnicity variables uncentered. As a result, P,, reflects the average earnings of white women workers only.
61. The 95 percent confidence intervals reported for these point estimates are calculated using the standard errors of the model's coefficients. For example, in the case of the earnings penalties associated with Hispanic ethnicity, the standard error of the coefficient reported for the Hispanic variable is.01 1. The resulting 95% confidence interval is:, (.029 ± [.011 1.96]) The upper and lower values are calculated using the antilog function: 9.10 = 9.05, or $8.519, and 9.10008 = 9.09, or $8,884. Each value is subtracted from the antilog of of, or $8,955, to determine the 95%/G confidence interval surrounding the earnings penalty estimated by the coefficient.
62. Budig and England., “Wage Penalty for Motherhood.”
63. Because the estimated fixed effects do not change markedly from the random coefficients model to the full HLM, the fixed effects are not shown in Table 4. The slightly higher intercept (pOj) reported in Table 4 results from the decision to leave military presence uncentered for ease of interpretation. The intercept now represents mean earnings for a white woman (who is not a military wife), with average characteristics, residing in an LMA with average characteristics but with a military presence of zero.
64. Philip Cohen, “Black Concentration Etfects.”
65. Lawrence Boyd, “The Economics of the Coal Company Town.”
66. Jacqueline Scarville, Spousal Employnient in the Army (research report #1555) (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute, 1990).
67. Payne et al., “Tied Migration.”