A Note On Congressional Military Pay Setting

To maintain an all-volunteer force, military pay levels must be high enough to attract a sufficient quantity and quality of volunteers. Congress's commitment to maintaining such pay levels has been questioned. In this article we test a model of congressional military pay setting for the all-volunteer period, 1974- 1987 and find that Congress responds to decreases in the percentage of high-quality enlistments by increasing real military pay. Pay is not adjusted to completely offset expected inflation, however.