Education.  The socioeconomic status of children and adolescents is closely related to mothers' education, fathers' education, average family income, and fathers' occupational status.  Analysis of data collected for the Profile of American Youth study showed that mothers' education approximated the effects of all four variables.(24)  Thus, the measure of recruit mothers' education becomes important as an indicator of high-quality recruits.  Approximately 20 percent of recruit mothers earned a college degree or better; an additional 29 percent accrued some college credits.

CPS fathers were somewhat better educated than DoD fathers (Table 7.2).  The CPS fathers were more likely to have graduated from college than DoD fathers (29 percent for CPS and 24 percent for DoD), while DoD fathers were more likely to be a high school graduate or less (51 percent for DoD and 47 percent for CPS).  CPS mothers were also slightly better educated than their DoD counterparts, although the pattern of results is somewhat different.  Approximately the same percentage of DoD and CPS mothers attended college, whether or not they graduated (49 percent for DoD and 50 percent for CPS).  However, a slightly greater percentage of CPS mothers graduated college than did DoD mothers (22 percent for CPS and 20 percent for DoD).  Similarly, CPS mothers were slightly more likely to have graduated from high school than DoD mothers (36 percent for CPS and 34 percent for DoD).

For both DoD and CPS parents, fathers were somewhat more educated than mothers.  This difference is reflected in the greater percentage of college graduates among fathers (24 percent for DoD and 29 percent for CPS) than among mothers (20 percent for DoD and 22 percent for CPS).  CPS fathers are also more likely to have education beyond high school than CPS mothers (54 percent for CPS fathers and 50 percent for CPS mothers); while a comparable difference was not found between DoD fathers and mothers. 

On the average, parents of Air Force accessions had more advanced educational credentials than parents in the other Services.  Both Air Force fathers and mothers were more likely to have at least a high school diploma (88 percent for both fathers and mothers) than the overall active duty average (83 percent for both fathers and mothers).  They were also more likely to have attended or graduated college (54 percent for fathers and 52 percent for mothers) than the active duty average (50 percent for fathers and 49 percent for mothers).  There were no other differences of note in parent education between Services or between parents of active duty and Reserve Component accessions.

Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower, Reserve Affairs, and Logistics), Profile of American Youth: 1980 Nationwide Administration of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (Washington, DC:  March 1982), pp. 40–42. (go back)

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