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Previous Active-Duty Force Reductions Did Not Generally Decrease Demographic Diversity

• Despite major reductions in the size of the active-duty force in all four services in the 1990s, demographic diversity generally increased.
• Although the Navy and Air Force reduced their active-duty forces in the mid-2000s, demographic diversity of those forces generally increased between fiscal years 2001 and 2011.

Specific Drawdown Effects on Demographic Diversity are Unclear

• Drawdown decisions do not have clear-cut ties to demographic diversity because the services do not make drawdown decisions with demographic goals in mind.

Certain Drawdown Strategies Could Affect Demographic Diversity

• Three categories of workforce characteristics are used to separate active-duty personnel in drawdowns: experience, occupational specialty, and merit. Any of these could affect demographic diversity due to uneven distribution of demographic groups across the three categories.
• Cuts to nontactical operational occupations could adversely affect women and blacks; cuts to tactical operational occupations could adversely affect Hispanic men; cuts based on long service may adversely affect black personnel, but cuts based on short service could adversely affect women; tightening accessions standards could adversely affect both women and minorities.

In January 2012, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced plans for a large-scale reduction — or drawdown — of its military force. The last drawdown to affect all four DoD services occurred in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War. During that period, the military shrank by almost 37 percent, from about 2.17 million in FY 1987 to 1.37 million by FY 2000. Despite having a variety of goals and strategies for the 1990s and mid-2000s drawdowns, the services had few, if any, explicit diversity goals or strategies related to the drawdowns. Based on our discussions with force management experts, demographic diversity is also not part of their recent drawdown goals and strategies. However, the drawdown could have unintended consequences for demographic diversity even when diversity is not part of drawdown decisionmaking. To address the issue of unintended consequences of drawdowns on diversity, the Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity (ODMEO) in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) asked RAND to analyze how force reductions could affect the demographic diversity of the DoD workforce. Our study focuses on gender and race/ethnicity, although we include other individual differences, such as education, in some analyses.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Active-Duty Drawdown in the 1990s

• Chapter Three

  Navy and Air Force Active-Duty Drawdowns in the Mid-2000s

• Chapter Four

  Law, Policy, and Plans for Recent Active-Duty Drawdowns

• Chapter Five

  Potential Impact of Recent Drawdowns on Demographic Diversity in Active-Duty Force

• Chapter Six

  Conclusions and Recommendations

• Appendix A

  Reserve Component Drawdowns

• Appendix B

  Civilian Drawdowns

• Appendix C

  Methodology and Additional Results for Chapters Two to Four

• Appendix D

  Overview of Tools Available for Recent Drawdown