Jay Teachman Lucky Tedrow Western Washington University
Using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY-79), the study will examine the relationship between military service, veteran status, and patterns of union formation and dissolution among young men. The research will extend beyond the existing literature by explicitly considering how military service and subsequent veteran status during the All Volunteer Force (AVF) era has affected important family life-course transitions including marriage, cohabitation, and union dissolution. Particular attention will be paid to potential variations in the effect of military service and veteran status as they occur according to race, education, and characteristics of service. In addition, the research will make use of several 'natural experiments' made possible by the design of the NLSY-79 to more accurately adjust for the fact that men who enter the military may differ from other men on unobserved characteristics that affect union formation and dissolution.
In addition to generating useful information about the impact of a major social institution, the military, on the early life course trajectories of young men, the research will provide an opportunity for undergraduate students to participate fully in an on-going research project. Western Washington University is a primarily undergraduate teaching institution that has a long history of involving undergraduates in research and stimulating their desire to pursue graduate education. Over the life of this project, the PIs will employ several undergraduate students who will actively engage themselves in the research being conducted. They will be given the opportunity to write research papers, to present them at professional meetings and submit them for publication. The data base constructed for the project will also be made available to all faculty and students in the Department of Sociology at WWU. Finally, the PIs will make use of the department's web page to widely disseminate research findings, stimulating links with other researchers interested in examining the role the military plays in molding social life in the United States and elsewhere.
