What percentage of us military is gay

Federal government websites often end in. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site. The site is secure. NCBI Bookshelf. In this chapter, we present an overview of military families' key demographic and military service characteristics in an effort to better understand these families and the extent to which the U.

Department of Defense DoD is meeting their needs. After first laying out the sources of this information that are available to DoD, including those both internal and external to DoD, we highlight statistics corresponding to organizational and individual characteristics of service members and their dependents.

In this overview, the committee points out how DoD may be using or interpreting these statistics in assessing military family needs, and how attention to intersectionality can aid DoD in identifying any gaps or undetected patterns in these needs. Based on this overview, the committee identifies additional demographic and military service data collection and analyses that would help DoD understand how well a wider range of military families is faring and whether new or revised programs and policies are required to meet their needs.

This additional input should assist DoD in meeting its obligations regarding the care of service members and their families and the readiness of the all-volunteer force. As described in Chapter 1the focus of this report is active and reserve component service members and their families, both while they are in the military and as they transition out of it.

We finally have data about the number of LGBT people in the military

Additionally, the statement of task for this study specifically requested that the committee be attentive to population subgroups and named race, ethnicity, service branch, and military what percentage of us military is gay as examples. Thus, this chapter serves as a reference for the relative size of different types of key subgroups discussed throughout this report.

Code2 and because most of the available information about military families concerns service members and their military dependents, that was also the primary, although not exclusive, focus of this committee. As noted in Chapter 1a dependent family member may be. A child may be a child by blood, by marriage, or by adoption.

A spouse is considered a military dependent regardless of his or her own earnings. With all of this in mind, it is important to note that there are more military dependents than there are military personnel. Inthere were 2, active component and Selected Reserve service members, with 2, dependents U.

Department of Defense [DoD],p. The committee considers the demographic information and military service characteristics presented in this chapter to be relevant for understanding. Reviewing all potentially relevant demographic and military service characteristics here is not feasible; therefore, the absence of discussion of any particular characteristics should not be construed as an indication that it is irrelevant.

Identifying sources of information about military families is critical for understanding the availability and quality of data that DoD has at its disposal. DoD gathers and maintains certain types of demographic and military service data on service members and military dependents to assist with the organizational management of personnel e.

DoD also routinely sponsors surveys to gather insights on the attitudes and experiences of service members and spouses, such as the perceived impact of deployments, satisfaction with military programs and services, and attitudes toward continued military service. These surveys also typically gather demographic and military service data, some of which are used to weight the analytic sample.

The surveys include the recurring active and reserve component versions of the Status of Forces surveys of service members and spouse surveys. They also include the Millennium Cohort Study and Millennium Cohort Family Study, which are longitudinal epidemiological studies of cohorts of military personnel and family members.

The latter two studies focus on health and well-being, health behaviors, health conditions and symptoms, exposures e. Additionally, the family study covers issues such as family functioning and children's behaviors and health conditions. The Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development also conducts the Million Veteran Program, a national voluntary research program that collects information from veterans to build a database of genetic, lifestyle, and health information as well as information on the military experience.

A strength of DoD efforts is their visibility on many characteristics of the entire population of service members and contact information that can be used to solicit participation in research. Although the administrative personnel datasets will contain some missing, erroneous, or outdated information, DoD possesses much more information about this population than most organizations or scientific studies are able to access for any given population.

However, DoD has much less information about dependents than about service members; in fact, dependents are often studied by making use of their related service members' characteristics. Although DoD maintains a wealth of data, understanding the legal boundaries within which it is required to operate is essential.