Rural communities in Colorado and across the United States are producing more than their share of new American military recruits, according to a ZIP code analysis of Defense Department recruitment records from 2004.
These areas, particularly in the South and West, always have been fertile ground for military recruiters, experts say.
But as one indicator of urban participation – African-American enlistment rates – declines across the country, the armed forces are receiving more enlistees from rural areas, according to military sociologists who study recruiting.
The analysis, released last month by the National Priorities Project in Northampton, Mass., showed that Colorado’s rural Jackson County had the second-highest recruitment rate in the country.
Though only four recruits signed up there last year, they represented nearly 3 percent of the county’s 18- to-24-year-old population, according to the study.
A Denver Post comparison of the study’s recruitment figures with 2004 county-population data showed that after Jackson County, the Colorado counties with the highest recruitment rates were San Juan, Dolores, Washington and Mesa counties.
Denver ranked 46th. Recruiting figures were not available for seven Colorado counties, and no Marine Corps data was included in the National Priorities Project study.
The National Priorities Proj ect tracks federal spending and programs and their impacts on local communities.
The project describes itself as nonpartisan but says that the U.S. military is very reliant on poor people from rural areas.
Nationally, the study showed the same trend of rural areas producing recruits at a higher rate than urban areas.
“Rural America might find itself more on the same wavelength as the Bush administration,” Northwestern University military sociologist Charles Moskos said.
He attributes the disparity to “two factors: Economic opportunities are limited in rural areas, and patriotism is higher.”
Denver County produced 193 Army, Air Force and Navy recruits last year. On the Western Slope, much-smaller Mesa County produced 151, according to the study.
One Mesa County recruit, 18- year-old Chris DeVinny of Grand Junction, took his final steps toward becoming an Army soldier at the Defense Department’s regional Military Entrance Processing Center in downtown Denver on Friday.
DeVinny expects several of his friends to follow him into the services, he said during a break between his medical exam and his aptitude test.
“The town doesn’t have a lot of options for teenagers,” De Vinny said. “One of the best things to do is to sign up and kick-start your life, rather than staying in town.”
On average, incomes in the 20 counties with the highest recruiting rates in the nation were about 30 percent lower than average incomes in their respective states, according to the study.
“You’re not getting the better neighborhoods of the city or the suburbs,” Moskos said.
Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank, disagrees with that class analysis.
Kane argues that the numbers of recruits behind the recruiting rates in the study are too small to support the National Priorities Project’s broad conclusions about class.
“In all … (the) top 20 (recruiting) counties accounted for just 275 recruits, less than two-tenths of 1 percent of all the recruits in 2004,” Kane wrote in a recent rebuttal to the study.
He also accused the study of overgeneralizing income trends across counties.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Brodeur, commander of the Army’s Denver Recruiting Battalion, said his office is finding recruits in all classes.
“We’re not having a problem at all,” Brodeur said. “We’re getting plenty of the middle income and the high end.”
He also doesn’t believe there is an urban-rural split in Colorado recruits, he said.
Brodeur said the drop-off in African-American recruits described by the Army nationwide is not happening in Colorado.
Nationally, 22 percent of young African-Americans had a favorable view of the military in 2003, according to market research cited by the U.S. Army in a recent memo on the subject.
Last year, that number had dropped to 11 percent, the memo said. African-Americans are less inclined to sign up than any other ethnic group, according to the Army.
“It appears from market research that the ongoing Global War on Terror has had a disproportionate effect on the African-American recruiting market,” it said.
But Army recruiters in Colorado saw an average of about 77 African-American enlistments over the past three years – par for the course, Brodeur said.
His recruiters have a special mission to recruit Hispanic soldiers in this region, he said.
Les Franklin, the founder of Denver’s Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth, said the teens and young adults he works with in the city show no interest in the military. They see too many other, safer job opportunities, he said.
“When I talk to boys, they sure don’t talk about wanting to join the military,” he said. “Today, a lot of people understand that being in the military is almost a sure shot to head to Iraq and the Middle East.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
