Military members value some types of compensation more than the cost to provide it and conversely undervalue others, finds the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in a study the center says could form the basis for intelligent decisions on reforming military compensation.
The July study (.pdf), authored by CSBA resident budget wonk Todd Harrison, takes as its data set a CSBA-sponsored online survey that generated 2,655 responses, half of those from active-duty service members. The study sample, Harrison acknowledges, is not a representatives sample of the active-duty population since respondents are self-selected and some ranks are over- or under-represented.
Nonetheless, the survey was an attempt to collect data on how service members themselves value different types of compensation, such as basic pay, a potential performance-based bonus, health insurance benefits and others.
The subject of military compensation is a touchy one, he recognizes, and the subject of the compensation system's effect on recruiting and retention fell outside the scope of the survey.
The results show that service members of all ranks place a high value on basic pay, especially those at the lower end of the pay scale. However, the value service members appear to place on a performance-based bonus would only be a fraction of the cost it would take to implement those bonuses.
Healthcare benefits is an area of general undervaluation, particularly among young service members. But even mid-career personnel--those with 6 to 15 years of service--would typically prefer an immediate increase in pay in place of smaller TRICARE Prime fees. According to the survey results, 89 percent of mid-career personnel would prefer an immediate increase of $350 to basic pay in exchange for an $1,400 annual increase in the TRICARE Prime fee they would pay once retired.
Child, youth and school services is another area of undervaluation--75 percent of junior officers and 99 percent of all other rank groups don't value those services to the extent it costs to provide them. Military exchanges, meanwhile, are valued as much or more than they cost by a majority of service members in each rank group.
Harrison's overriding premise is that the all-volunteer military force in its current form is unsustainable, thanks to a 46 percent inflation-adjusted increase in costs per person in the active duty over the past decade. That increase also excludes war funding. If personnel costs continue growing at that rate--and the defense budget doesn't grow in real terms, military personnel costs would consume the entire defense budget by 2039, Harrison says.