The number of service members and veterans who would recommend joining the armed forces has plummeted over the past two years – a waning enthusiasm that could threaten national security, according to new research released Thursday.

The 2021 Military Family Support Programs Survey, which involved 8,638 active duty members, retirees, dependents and veterans, found that while 63% of respondents would recommend military life to anyone considering, that number was down from 75% in 2019.

The survey also found that enlisted service members and their spouses were significantly less likely to recommend military service than officers and their families.

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The shift is concerning as more and more members of the armed forces are the children of serving military personnel or veterans, advocates say. According to the Army Recruiting Command, 79% of recruits in 2019 had a parent who served.

“To me, that was alarming. That was a big drop,” said Shannon Razsadin, Navy wife and executive director of the Military Family Advisory Network, which sponsored the survey. “We know the future of the all-volunteer force is military children. We joke that the military is a family business.”

MFAN has conducted the survey annually since 2014 to understand the issues facing military families. The review explores mental and financial well-being, health care, debt, housing and more, with the goal of making recommendations and creating programs to improve quality of life.

This year’s survey found that, like many Americans, military families are struggling financially. More than 40% reported having a total household income of $25,000 to $75,000, with the lowest amounts below the US poverty line for a family of four at $26,500, and over 50 % said they spent more than half of their monthly income, including their housing allowances, on housing and utilities.

Military families also reported financial hardship, with more than 22% of active duty families and 38.4% of veteran families reporting having less than $500 in savings for emergencies. Nearly 76% said they had debt, with mortgages, credit cards and car loans causing the most financial stress.

Some families also struggle to put food on the table: The number of military and veteran families experiencing food insecurity, defined as having limited and reliable access to nutritious food, was 1 in 6 in 2021 – an improvement from 2020, when it was 1 in 5 families, but down from 2019, when 1 in 8 families reported being food insecure.

Razsadin said MFAN is concerned that the survey was conducted before the price of food and gasoline skyrocketed due to inflation and federal protections under the COVID-19 pandemic have been removed.

“It’s no surprise that people are really struggling to make ends meet,” Razsadin said.

As military families struggle for financial stability, they also struggle to maintain a decent quality of life, with happy, productive families that work as a team, the report said. In 2021, about 41% reported having “excellent” family health and 44.7% moderate family health, with the remainder reporting that their families were in poor condition.

Split by rank, however, enlisted families from pay grades E-1 through E-6 made up the majority of those reporting poor family health.

“It’s something we’ll be spending time on over the next year, dissecting the ‘why?’ Enlisted families do not achieve the same level of well-being as families of officers,” Razsadin said.

When it comes to health care, retirees and veterans in the survey tended to rate the quality of their care better than active-duty families, but retirees reported more difficulty getting appointments and to access care than families or active duty veterans.

However, access problems were not limited to retirees. A Navy wife wrote that she sometimes needed to book medical appointments six months in advance.

“Not enough providers… hard to see providers, providers not prov[id]proper care,” the spouse wrote.

And an Army spouse said he learned to outsmart the system to get care.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” the spouse wrote. “It’s exhausting and sad – it breaks military families apart. We really don’t want to beg for the basic health care we were promised, but we need it to survive.”

Other interesting findings from the survey include:

• 48% said they were dissatisfied with access to mental health services
• 78.3% had difficulty obtaining child care in the past two years
• 54% said they were alone, separated from their spouse and isolated from their family

The group included several recommendations for improving the lives of military families in its report on the investigation, proposals it hopes the Pentagon and Congress will consider when writing policy or enacting legislation.

Recommendations include increasing the availability of medical appointments and childcare places, adjusting wages to counter rising prices and increasing the basic housing allowance in some cases. to relieve financial difficulties.

“The basic needs allowance [a stipend for service members with incomes less than 130% of the federal poverty line] is sitting in the Pentagon right now. I hope it will be presented in a way that is accessible to families,” Razsadin said. And I really, really hope that the basic housing allowance will be scaled up. … There is no reason why [military families] should live in motorhomes.”

The full report can be found on the MFAN website.

– Patricia Kime can be reached at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

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