Soldiers' Nonmonetary Incentives

Some anecdotal evidence suggests that the Army's policy of trying to buy re-enlistment through increased bonuses may not be as effective as some think. It is an interesting question, isn't it? What is the price point for agreeing to stay in Iraq? On the one hand, money is probably at least some part of every soldier's re-enlistment calculations. The young soldier who says he wouldn't re-enlist for "even a million dollars" is probably mispredicting his own behavior, but it is a rather unlikely scenario so his hyperbole is well-taken.

But just how much weight does the money have? I think our intuition (if not our idealism) thinks of soldiers as being motivated more by camaraderie and patriotism than a paycheck:

First Lieutenant Colin Crow, from Louisiana, said the extra cash might be an incentive for some troops, but for most soldiers "it's not the money, it's the guys you're serving with and the job you're doing."

And yet when the Army wants these soldiers to re-enlist, they go straight to the wallet. And maybe they have good reason:

Private First Class David Quintero, from Texas, said he believed the bonus might encourage "soldiers who are sitting on the fence over to reenlist."

"But if I had something better lined up in the private sector I probably wouldn't," he said as he sat in his Humvee vehicle on the Army base here in the palace compound of the ousted Iraqi leader.

Particularly when a bad economy is one of the Army's best recruiting tools, increased monetary benefits ought to be especially useful. It increases the economic contrast between re-enlistment and private sector opportunities, and if that is the deciding factor than the Army is on the right path. That said, however, money is clearly only a piece of the puzzle in each soldier's calculations. Continue to increase the costs of service, the length of separation from family, the risk of death in foreign lands, and the benefits will have to rise pretty high to encourage re-enlistment.

So high, perhaps, that service can no longer be fully voluntary. We've seen the beginnings of that with various stop-loss initiatives, and murmurs about a new draft just won't seem to go away. I do not think it will be necessary or desirable, but it not inconceivable that at some point the compensation required to keep soldiers re-enlisting may outweigh the benefits of an all-volunteer force.