Shocked into Service: Free Trade and the American South’s Military Burden

Abstract

Free trade has gradually shifted the burden of military service onto the American South. While trade shocks generally lead to local increases in US Army enlistment, there are two different regional dynamics that concentrate this effect in the South. First, trade-related job losses are disproportionately concentrated in this region, where manufacturing jobs gradually migrated during the second half of the twentieth century. Second, the South’s “military tradition,” a relatively youthful population, and weak labor unions, combine to translate trade shocks into larger spikes in Army enlistment than the rest of the country. This paper uses county-level data from 1996–2010 to demonstrate the importance of meso-level, regional factors for understanding the location of trade shocks, as well as how communities adjust to such economic dislocations. We find that trade-related job losses account for roughly 7% of the South’s over-representation in the Army during our period of study.