Politicians are more likely to support conscription when they don’t have draft-age sons

Eurekalert Science News ^ | 2023 | University of Chicago Press

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Do politicians internalize the consequences of their war-related votes? A new paper published in the Journal of Political Economy finds that they do -- when their family is involved.

In “No Kin in the Game: Moral Hazard and War in the U.S. Congress,” authors Eoin F. McGuirk, Nathaniel Hilger, and Nicholas Miller compare conscription-related voting records of members of Congress with and without draft-age sons. They find that legislators with sons eligible for the draft are 7-11 percentage points less likely to vote for conscription than their counterparts with daughters of the same age.

The authors compiled a dataset of the 248 roll-call votes pertaining to conscription that were undertaken in the United States House of Representatives and Senate between 1917 and 1974, a period which saw U.S. involvement in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

The authors established which members of Congress serving during each of those four wars had sons of draftable age, as conscription in this period in American history only applied to men…

The idea is that a legislator with a son below the cutoff is potentially exposed to the potential costs of conscription, as their son could perhaps be conscripted in the future, while one with a son above the upper age cutoff had no risk of this. The researchers found that this latter group was 18.8 percentage points more likely to vote in favor of conscription than their counterparts with younger sons.

They find that a congressperson is 12.7 percentage points more likely to vote for conscription one year after their son ages out of draft eligibility than they were the year before. “This is unlikely to be caused by a sudden change in preferences or electoral motives,” the authors write…

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TOPICS: Military/Veterans
KEYWORDS: conscription; draft; draftbarron; iran; iraq; lindseygraham; veterans; vietnam; war

[Manuel OKelley]

Translation:

Politicians don’t support slavery when they or their sons might be enslaved

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

If there are six members of congress who have sons of draft age I would be surprised.

[Skwor]

How does this rate as news or even worth a study?

Kings, politicians etc.. have always been such.

[ComputerGuy]

When I was coming of age, there was a war going on. And the Draft.

[Alberta's Child]

I’ll know the U.S. is involved in a legitimate and necessary military campaign when I see Barron Trump and a bucket full of @ssholes from the Bush and Cheney families in military uniforms.

[Codeflier]

Filed under Lindsay Graham.

[Fury]

There will never be another successful draft.

The US is too divided and there is no national emergency that I believe would coalesce support from all political perspectives.

[Blurb2350]

The U.S. Army has quietly raised its upper enlistment age 7 years to 42. And this year’s NDAA has language to make draft registration automatic, using existing government databases — young men won’t need to do it themselves. The current process is a mess, with widespread noncompliance (Selective Service reported to Congress that only 42% of 18-year-olds had registered), out-of-date contact info, etc. Keep in mind only Congress can call for a draft, i.e., forced conscription.

[Myrddin]

I was in my senior year at UCSD when I turned 19. I lived off campus, so I sometimes paid a visit to a lounge near the dorms that had a TV. My draft card had been reissued with a 1A status on my 19th birthday, so I was keenly interested when they started pulling the lottery numbers by birth date. I had to wait awhile until they started working into August. My number came up 319. Those with numbers under 100 were likely to be called up.

My oldest son served in the USMC in Kuwait/Iraq in 2003. He will turn 43 next month. My youngest son will turn 39 in August.

[Myrddin]

Minor correction. My oldest son died in 2012. It is my middle son who served in Iraq/Kuwait.

[ansel12]

You came of age when the draft was normal, it was a continuous draft from 1940 to 1973.

[ansel12]

“””””The U.S. Army has quietly raised its upper enlistment age 7 years to 42.”””””

They returned to what it was from 2007 to 2016, 42 years of age, the Air Force is still at age 42 and the Navy and Coast Guard at age 41.

[rellic]

I enlisted at the tail end of Vietnam war.
Enlistment meant I selected my area of
exposure to war.
I was required to, but never registered
for the draft since I was already in
the military.
I was deep inside the cold War,
I kept Nuclear armed aircraft
functional 24/7.
America send me to 10 months of schooling,
and then a rather long apprenticeship,
before I was “Approved” to sign off on
work orders(repairs).

[oldbill]

You can leave here now and go back to Alberta where you can hide under Uncle Sam’s defensive shield and enjoy the socialism you left.

[ComputerGuy]

I was home from Vietnam when they had the first draft lottery. I decided to stay up and watch, no matter how long it took. Turns out, I was lucky number thirteen. They would have gotten me, anyway.

[Longdriver69]

ice cube’s chance in hell

[Manuel OKelley]

Fighting the wars is for the plebes you know.

IMO if an actual draft starts again in this country there will be domestic violence greater than anything seen in 150 years.

[ansel12]

“””””I enlisted at the tail end of Vietnam war.
Enlistment meant I selected my area of
exposure to war.”””””

That depends, I enlisted in the Army during the war and signed up unassigned, leaving it up to the Army.

[Myrddin]

Turns out, I was lucky number thirteen. They would have gotten me, anyway.

That sucks. You secured a better job by volunteering before the draft grabbed you. My skillset at the time of the lottery would have been suitable for doing chem/bio weapons research and/or signing up for military med school. I just retired from doing software for DoD including deliveries to the field over 33 1/2 years. Visits to Rammstein, NSA Naples and Izmir, Turkey as well as SHAPE provided some perspective.