Assessing Compensation Reform Research In Support Of The 10th Quadrennial Review Of Military Compensation

Military compensation is a pillar of the all-volunteer force. It is a fundamental policy tool for attracting and retaining personnel, and its structure-and the incentives implied by its structure-can affect U.S. service members' willingness to join, exert effort, demonstrate their leadership potential, remain in the military, and, eventually, exit the military at an appropriate time. Military compensation is a composite of current pay and allowances, special and incentive pays, health benefits, disability benefits, retirement benefits, and other benefits. Its importance to the readiness and morale of the force is such that it is reviewed every four years to determine whether it is adequate to meet the U.S. military's objectives. To inform the 10th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, this monograph presents an in-depth examination of the mix and structure of the U.S. military's current retirement-benefit system and several policy alternatives. The study included the development of a model that was estimated and used to run a series of simulations based on active-duty and reserve personnel data to track the careers and potential decisionmaking of military personnel across the services. The simulation results were then assessed in terms of their cost-effectiveness and ability to meet the services' expectations for accession, retention, and career mobility.

Military retirement reform has been a central element of the policy debate regarding why and how to restructure the system for compensating members of the U.S. armed forces. Concerns about the compensation system, and the retirement system specifically, include the rising cost of military compensation and the need for greater efficiency in the provision of compensation, the greater need for flexibility to reshape the force as missions change in ways that challenge the current compensation system, and issues related to the equity of military retirement benefits of active versus reserve personnel, junior versus senior personnel, and military personnel versus their civilian counterparts. Active members can claim retirement benefits before reservists can; junior members who leave prior to completing 20 years of service do not qualify for retirement benefits, unlike their more senior counterparts; and the 20-year vesting rule is outside the civilian vesting norm of 5-7 years of service, under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The 10th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation (QRMC), building on previous studies and commission reports, including the 2006 report of the Defense Advisory Committee on Military Compensation (DoD, 2006) and the 2000 report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Human Resources Strategy, has proposed an alternative military retirement system that addresses concerns regarding the current system while still sustaining the force. The defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans are the foundation of the alternative system considered in this analysis. RAND was asked to develop a modeling capability to assess compensation alternatives, such as the QRMC proposal, in terms of their effects on military retention, retirement behavior, vesting, cost, reserve participation, and the value of compensation from the perspective of the member leaving active duty. This monograph presents the results of that study.

The Routledge Handbook of Defence Studies provides a comprehensive collection of essays on contemporary defence studies by leading international scholars. Defence studies is a multi-disciplinary study of how agents, predominantly states, prepare for and go to war. Whereas security studies has been broadened and stretched to cover at times the near totality of international and domestic affairs, and war studies has come to mean not just operations and tactics but also experiences and outcomes, defence studies remains a coherent area of study primarily aimed at how defence policy changes over time and in relation to stimulating factors such as alterations in power, strategy and technology. This new Handbook offers a complete landscape of this area of study and contributes to a review of defence studies in terms of policy, security and war, but also looks forward to new challenges to existing conceptions of defence and how this is changing as states and their militaries also change. The volume is divided into four thematic sections: Defence as Policy; Defence Practice; Operations and Tactics; and Contemporary Defence Issues. The ability to review the field while also looking forward to further research is an important element of a sustainable text on defence studies. In as much as this volume is able to highlight the main themes of defence studies, it also offers an in-depth look into how defence issues can be examined and compared in a contemporary setting. This Handbook will be of great interest to students of defence studies, strategic studies, war studies, security studies and IR.

The critical link between psychology and the military is imprtant to recruiting, training, socializing, assigning, employing, deploying, motivating, rewarding, maintaining, managing, integrating, retaining, transitioning, supporting, counseling, and healing military members. These areas are hardly distinct, and the chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Military Psychology have contents that cross these boundaries. Collectively, the topics covered in this volume describe the myriad ways in which modern psychology influences warfare and vice versa. The extensive topics included come from within the areas of clinical, industrial/organizational, experimental, engineering, and social psychology. The contributors are top international experts in military psychology -- some uniformed soldiers, others academics and clinicians, and others civilian employees of the military or other government agencies. They address important areas in which the science and practice of psychology supports military personnel in their varied and complex missions. Among the topics addressed here are suitability for service, leadership, decision making, training, terrorism, socio-cultural competencies, diversity and cohesion, morale, quality-of-life, ethical challenges, and mental health and fitness. The focus is the ways in which psychology promotes the decisive human dimension of military effectiveness. Collectively, the 25 topical chapters of this handbook provide an overview of modern military psychology and its tremendous influence on the military and society as a whole.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 directed the Secretary of Defense to report on food insecurity among service members and their dependents. RAND researchers examined this directive and recommended other topics for analysis.

Through analysis of many alternatives, develops two concepts for reforming the military compensation system, both of which retain positive aspects of the current system while addressing criticisms related to fairness and fiscal sustainability.

Introduction and summary. Defining military compensation ; Comparing military and civilian compensation ; Factors that complicate military-civilian comparisons -- Military pay, promotions, and rank -- Estimates of military compensation. Total compensation for enlisted personnel by years of experience ; Cash earnings for selected occupations -- Comparing increases in military and civilian pay. The "gap" between changes in basic pay and civilian earnings ; Issues in using the "pay gap" to evaluate military compensation ; Increases in regular military compensation versus the employment cost index -- Comparing levels of military and civilian pay. Cash compensation ; Noncash and deferred benefits ; General limitations of military-civilian comparisons -- Linking military compensation to recruiting and retention. Effectiveness of using pay to resolve occupational shortages or surpluses ; Effects of cash and noncash compensation on recruiting and retention -- Options to increase the visibility and efficiency of military compensation. Integrating the components of total compensation ; Increasing cash relative to noncash compensation -- Appendix A: Total compensation for the median enlisted member -- Appendix B: How pay changes with deployment -- Appendix C: Types of occupation- or skills-based compensation.