Military spouses with occupational licenses struggle to find work after a move, despite state laws

State laws to make it easier for military spouses with occupational licenses to find work after a move still present barriers for job-seekers, Jen Fifield reports for Stateline. A report by the Treasury Department found that 35 percent of military spouses—more than 100,000 people—require licenses or certifications for their professions. A survey by Blue Star Families, a non-profit for more than 150,000 military spouses, found that 63 percent of them encountered licensing problems because of a move. The number was 70 percent in 2014.

"Laws were driven by a White House campaign aimed at decreasing the unemployment rate for military spouses, 92 percent of whom are women," Fifield writes. The unemployment rate for military spouses was 23 percent in 2015, down from 26 percent in 2010, says a report by the U.S. Department of Defense. The rate is high because military families move often, about once every two to three years, says a report by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University. (Screenshot of Stateline interactive map showing how easy or hard it is for military spouses to get a permanent or temporary occupational license in a new state)

Keeping working military spouses happy is key, because spouses cite employment as a top concern and they "are 36 percent more likely to recommend military service to others if they are able to maintain a career," Fifield writes.

"In 29 states, the law provides for three allowances supported by the Pentagon—recognizing out-of-state licenses, issuing temporary licenses and expediting licensing," Fifield writes. "But even in those states, the laws only include spouses in certain circumstances and certain professions, and the state may not be required to provide the allowances. And in many cases, spouses don’t know the laws exist." (Read more)

Rural veterans are getting older as overall population of rural veterans continues to shrink

The average age of rural veterans is on the rise, while their overall population continues to decrease, Tim Marema reports for the Daily Yonder. The Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that from 1992 to 2011 the number of rural veterans declined from 6.6. million to 3.9 million, and about half of all rural veterans are 65 years or older. (ERS graphics)

Part of the decline in population can be attributed to some former non-metropolitan counties' re-classification as metro and the overall decrease in number of military personnel since 1990, Marema writes. The biggest problem, Marema writes, is the increasing age gap among rural veterans; less than 3 percent of all rural veterans are between the ages of 18 and 34. Among the overall rural population, about 25 percent of residents 65 and older are veterans, while only about 5 percent in the 18 to 34 age range are veterans. (Read more)

More than 40 percent of rural female veterans served during the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, while less than 5 percent of rural male veterans served in those wars, the report states. "Among rural veterans in 2011, racial/ethnic minorities made up 4 percent of WWII veterans, 5 percent of Korean War veterans, 8 percent of Vietnam-era veterans and 16 percent of Gulf War I and II veterans." To read the full report, click here.

Military weeding out obese and overweight troops

Between 1998 and 2010, CNN reports, the number of active-duty military personnel deemed overweight or obese more than tripled. In 2010, 5.3 percent of the force -- or 86,186 troops -- received at least a clinical diagnosis of overweight or obese, according to the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center. The trend has prompted the Pentagon to re-examine its training programs, and it is now actively weeding out soldiers deemed unfit to fight. It is also a tidy way to trim the budget at the same time as federal cuts loom. (CNN photo)

During the first 10 months of this year, 1,625 soldiers were dismissed for being out of shape. That's  about 15 times the number discharged for that reason in 2007 at the peak of wartime deployment, CNN reports. Overweight are considered "substandard" fighting units and a threat to national security and the nation' ability to maintain an adequate defense. Obesity is now the leading cause of ineligibility for those wishing to join, say military officials.

Rural America is more obese than America as a whole. In Kentucky, a state that ranks high in obesity, military recruitment rates (as a percentage of the recruits per 100,000 youth aged 18-24) have dropped steadily from 2007, when it was 2.53 percent, to 2010, when it was 1.94 percent. Perhaps the state's high obesity rate was a reason. (Read more)

Veterans seem to prefer rural areas close to bases

The number of people in the U.S. military has decreased since 1980, but the number of veterans living in rural areas has increased over that same time, and civilians have less contact with veterans now than ever before, a new report says. The research, to be published in the journal Armed Forces & Society, concludes that veterans are segregated into smaller areas of rural America, often close to military bases in states like Florida, Texas and Alabama, Emily Badger of The Atlantic reports.

In 1980, there were more than 28 million veterans and more than 2 million active-duty service members. By 2010, the number fell to 22 million and 1.4 million on active duty, Western Washington University sociologist Jay Teachman found after U.S. Census data analysis. The U.S. population grew by 80 million from 1980 to 2010, making veterans' share of the population drop to 7 percent from 12 percent over that time. Teachman's maps illustrating the decline of veterans "suggest that service in the military has increasingly become something for rural Americans to do," Badger reports.

Click map for larger version

"Little research has been done until now looking at just how these vets are geographically distributed across the country," Badger writes. "Based on Teachman's analysis, it appears they've been increasingly concentrated in smaller rural counties -- the same areas from which we know most military recruits are drawn." Eighty percent of all counties contained more than 10 percent veterans in 1980. But in 2010, just 26 percent of all counties contained 10 percent veterans, and most of them were rural. (Read more)

PBS documentary following two rural soldiers gets Emmy nomination

The story of Dominic and Cole, best friends who join the National Guard after graduating from their rural Northern Michigan high school, became the PBS documentary that The Washington Post called "hauntingly beautiful and deeply felt." Where Soldiers Come From is now also an Emmy nominee for Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a New Story, Long Form. For the documentary, director Heather Courtney returned to her own hometown to gain extraordinary access to Dominic and Cole to show how two men from a small town grew and changed, almost overnight, to become men, looking for bombs on the roadsides of Afghanistan. And how they came home again, victims of traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress, eventually disillusioned about their choices and their mission.

The National Priorities Project reports that, in 2004, 44 percent of military recruits came from rural areas. In contrast, only 14 percent came from major cities. Regionally, the Pentagon reports that most enlistees come from the South (40 percent) and the West (24 percent).

Where Soldiers Come From won the 2012 Independent Spirit Truer Than Fiction Award. The 33rd annual News and Documentary Emmy Award winners will be announced at a gala event at Frederick P. Rose Hall, located in the Time-Warner Center, on Monday, Oct. 1, in New York City.

Rural military participation overstated, but higher than urban

The White House is reporting rural residents, which represent 17 percent of the population, provide 44 percent of military personnel. Bill Bishop, editor of the Daily Yonder says this number is vastly overstated. "Rural communities are providing far more of their young to military service than the cities," Bishop writes. "But the percentage of rural residents in the military is still much less than half of what Vilsack and the White House and the White House Rural Council assert."

The White House appears to have grouped numbers from two different sources together despite any obvious relationship, Bishop reports. The 17 percent rural population figure is from the U.S. Census Bureau, and it appears the 44 percent is from a 2005 Washington Post story. (Read more)

White House spokesman Matt Lehrich admits the 44 percent is from the Washington Post story, but would not would not explain why the White House continues to use the statistic without verifying it with the Defense Department, Howard Berkes of NPR reports.

Suggesting the overstated number is inconsequential, Lehrich told Berkes, "Regardless of how you do the math, the point we were making is clear and important: Rural Americans are serving at a disproportionate rate and are an integral part of our military." (Read more)

Army charity fund is hoarding millions, AP reports

"From 2003 to 2007 — while military families dealt with long deployments and more home foreclosures — Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth," reports Jeff Donn of The Associated Press. "During those years, the charity put $117 million into its reserves while spending only $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records." This impacts rural families especially hard since Army recruitment draws disproportionately from rural areas.

The nonprofit organization has, for the most part, been funded by troops. Donn writes that the program "allows superiors to squeeze soldiers for contributions; forces struggling soldiers to repay loans, sometimes delaying transfers and promotions; and has violated its own rules by rewarding donors with such things as free passes from physical training."

The program, started in 1942, was design to ease the financial difficulties "of active-duty soldiers and retirees and provides college scholarships for their families," adds Donn. "Its emergency aid covers mortgage payments and food, car repairs, medical bills, travel to family funerals and the like." The latest recession surely represents an emergency for many soldiers.

AP found that instead of giving money to soldiers, "the Army charity lent 91 percent of its emergency aid during 2003-07," writes Donn. "Smaller civilian charities for service members and veterans say they are swamped by the needs of recent years, with requests far outstripping their ability to respond." (Read more)

Gulf War syndrome is real, federal panel concludes

A report issued by a congressionally mandated panel made up of scientists and veterans concluded "that Gulf War syndrome is real and still afflicts nearly a quarter of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 conflict," writes Mary Engel and Thomas H. Maugh II of the Los Angeles Times. The story is important in rural areas, which provide a disproportionate share of military recruits and often suffer from lack of access to medical care for veterans.

The report refutes longstanding government claims that deemed Gulf War syndrome was the result of stress and other unknown causes. Previous reports, including one by the Institute of Medicine, that found no evidence of the existence of Gulf War syndrome were apparently hampered by the Veterans Administration.

Engel and Maugh write, "The bulk of the evidence about the neurotoxic effects of the chemicals to which the soldiers were exposed comes from animal research, but the VA ordered the institute to consider only the much more limited human studies, skewing the results, the panel said." The report lists exposure to two different chemicals as the major causes of Gulf War syndrome. "The major causes of the disorder appear to be self-inflicted," write Engel and Maugh. "Pyridostigmine bromide was given to hundreds of thousands of troops in the fear that the Iraqis would unleash chemical warfare against them."

Symptoms associated with Gulf War syndrome include memory and concentration problems, persistent head aches, fatigue and pain. "The report vindicates hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied veterans who have been reporting a variety of neurological problems -- even as the government maintained that their symptoms were largely due to stress or other unknown causes," Engel and Maugh report. (Read more)

McCain wins rural vote, gun vote, military vote

UPDATE: John McCain won 53 percent of America's rural vote in the presidential election, according to exit polls taken for national news organizations. Among voters in households where someone owns a gun, he won 62 percent; among those who have served in the military, 54 percent. Rural areas provide a disproportionate share of military recruits.

Pre-election polls indicated that the rural vote would probably not go as strongly for McCain as he needed, based on pre-election polls. In battleground states, where both candidates were advertising and campaigning, a poll taken Oct. 1-21 -- a time exposure, not a snapshot -- showed Obama leading among rural voters 46 percent to 45 percent. A September poll in the same states showed McCain with a rural lead of 10 points.

A GfK poll for The Associated Press Oct. 16-20 found McCain leading among rural voters by 18 percentage points, but that poll ran counter to other surveys at the time, as it showed Barack Obama leading only by 1 percentage point, 44 to 43.

McCain's margin in the survey approached the 20 percent margin President Bush enjoyed over John Kerry in 2004. "The 2004 race was starkly divided between rural and urban," Bill Bishop and Tim Murphy write in the Daily Yonder. "Kerry carried urban counties by 3.75 million votes," but Bush "won the nation's 2,049 rural counties by 4.1 million votes and exurban counties by 2.56 million." The Yonder's exurban counties are those that are in metropolitan statistical areas but have a high percentage of residents living outside cities. For its methodology, click here.

Rural counties had 17.4 percent of the nation's voters in 2004. The Yonder counts 530 exurban counties that in 2004 accounted for 9.2 percent of the vote. The 562 urban counties had 73.4 percent. That last figure includes many voters typically identified as suburban. "Bush won 61 percent of the exurban vote nationally and 59.2 percent of the rural vote," Bishop and Murphy report. "Kerry won 51.6 percent of the vote in the nation's urban counties." For the Yonder's report, which includes a state-by-state chart of the vote by category, click here.

N.C. woman takes on military recruiters in school

As manufacturing jobs dwindle in rural areas and the economy remains stagnant the lack of opportunities for high school graduates has made them important targets for military recruiters. In Wilkesboro, N.C., Sally Ferrell has been trying to inform students about alternative careers outside the military. Now she has to do that away from the local high school, because school officials who see her efforts as unpatriotic have stopped her visits.

Writes Mitch Weiss of The Associated Press, "For three years, Ferrell has asked permission to distribute pamphlets and other materials that warn students to think twice before joining the military." Such counter-recruiting groups "say recruiters have given young people misleading information about military service and often target high schools in poor and rural areas where options for graduating students are limited; the activists want students to know they have prospects besides the military."

Typically, military recruiters are given complete access to high schools, and that was the case in Wilkesboro, until the controversy arose. "Now, they can only visit twice a semester," Weiss reports. "And when they do, they have to stand at a table outside the cafeterias. They can't sit down and talk with students while they're eating lunch." (Read more)