Military Compensation in the Age of Two-Income Households. Adding Spouses' Earnings to the Compensation Policy Mix

This dissertation will explore the policy relevance and utility of moving beyond current metrics for evaluating soldier pay to consideration of spousal earnings in shaping military compensation and manpower policy. The thrust of this effort will be directed to providing policy makers with an updated analytic framework that accounts for the effects of military service on civilian spouses' earnings. Consequently, this dissertation will not seek to identify a nexus between spouse earnings and soldier retention. Rather, it will address civilian spouse earnings as a potential channel through which policy can act to enhance military household welfare by improving the employment and wage prospects of soldiers? spouses. In this way, this dissertation will identify and explore policy options for enhancing military household earnings that do not entail dramatic increases to soldier pay, potentially at the expense of other Army budget accounts, as has been the trend to date. To the degree that this effort bears fruit, it will provide national decision-makers with policy options that are more reflective of labor market conditions that are likely to prevail into the new millennium rather than those extant at the - midpoint of the last century.