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Notes -
It's hard to get number for that long a period, but here's a graph from Pew of the share of the us population with military service that puts it at 45% in 1960 and steeply declining ever since.
I'm more familiar with numbers for WW2, and there's a few ways of calculating it but most estimations put it at around 45% of fighting age men and 32% of total eligible men.
Estimates for WW1 and Korea are much smaller, in the tens, but I couldn't really find reliable numbers.
In any case, I think this paints the picture of the military as a pretty important social institution for men at large up until Vietnam.
Isn't those number so high due to conscription mostly? And after 1973 it drops with no sign of recovering.
Well I would think conscription does count as "serving in the military" in the context of teaching boys to be men, wouldn't it?
And yeah, the post nam professional army clearly doesn't do this anymore.
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