After a rocky start to the volunteer military in the late 1970s, since 1980 the United States military services have met or exceeded their recruiting and retention goals in most years and have done so at reasonable cost. The ongoing conflict in Iraq is the U.S. military's first protracted...

"Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) educational benefits are a prime recruiting tool in today's all-volunteer military. This paper studies the effects of changes in education benefits using data of the period 1990-2005. Higher benefits lead to higher separation due to both pure incentive effects and by...