At a time when military recruiters are struggling to fill recruit quotas, an increasing number of Americans are failing to meet minimum weight requirements for military service, according to a study by Prof. John Cawley, policy analysis and management.
According to Cawley, the number one reason that potential recruits are rejected from the armed forces is because they are obese — making up 23 percent of rejected applications — while the second highest reason, marijuana use, constitutes 12 percent of rejectees.
“When the military first started using these weight requirements, they were trying to weed out [those who were] malnourished,” Cawley said, noting that the weight requirement now serves the opposite purpose.
Cawley, along with the help of Johanna Catherine Maclean grad, analyzed historical health data from the Centers for Disease Control.
“Data from nine different surveys, the earliest from 1959 and the most current from 2008, of the [general American] population was analyzed using the current military recruiting standards for four branches of the Armed Forces — the Army, Air Force, Marine Corp, and Navy,” Maclean said.
The findings were published in a paper titled “Unfit for Service: The Implications of Rising Obesity for U.S. Military Recruitment,” by the National Bureau of Economic Research in September.
Read the full story at the Cornell Daily Sun.
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