A growing number of civilians are too overweight to enlist in the U.S. military, according to a recent study done by researchers at Cornell University.

The number of Americans of military age, particularly women, who are ineligible for service under the current U.S. armed forces requirements for weight-for-height and body fat percentage has increased since the 1950s, said Johanna Catherine Maclean, co-author of the study and an economics doctoral student at Cornell.

Maclean and John Cawley, associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell, analyzed National Health and Nutrition Surveys spanning from 1959-2008 and observed the percent and number of civilians who did or did not meet military weight requirements, Maclean said. Their paper, ‘Unfit for Service: The Implications of Rising Obesity for U.S. Military Recruitment,’ was published in September by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

From the data collected from 2007-08, Maclean estimated 11.7 percent of men, about 5.7 million men, and 34.65 percent of women, about 16.5 million women, of military age were ineligible for military service because they were overweight or obese.

The most common reason applicants are medically disqualified from service is because they are obese, Maclean said. This constitutes 23 percent of denied applications. Marijuana use is the second most common reason and accounts for 12 percent of denied applications, Maclean said.

‘If these trends continue, we can expect that there will be lower and lower proportions of the population who will make the weight standards for the military,’ Maclean said.

The findings show military weight standards have become more lenient over time, but Maclean said she and her partner have yet to find military documents that assert military weight standards have become less stringent over time.

Unlike the standards of earlier times, the military currently follows a two-step procedure selecting applicants. An applicant’s weight is first compared with the minimum weight and maximum weight. Applicants are deemed eligible if their weight falls within that range and ineligible if their weight falls below the minimum. Applicants who weigh over the maximum have their body fat percentage measured. If body fat percentage is less than the maximum, that person is deemed weight-eligible.

Requirement categories, including weight for a certain height, percent body fat for men and women, and age, vary depending on the military branch, Maclean said. For instance, body mass index in the Marine Corps is higher than other branches because the Marines are interested in more muscular soldiers, she said.

Maclean offered several options the military could implement to remedy the problem. She said the military could make standards more lenient, although it would bring less-fit civilians into the military, or rely on more technology, such as battery-operated helicopters, that require less physical exertion from members. Other options could be to retain current members by providing them with incentives to stay in the military longer or to invest in private military companies, she said.

Maclean said she thinks these ideas are plausible, but is an economist and not a military expert, so she is not sure they are ideal.

While more military-specific solutions could potentially help the problem, America’s obesity epidemic is also a social problem, said Catherine Himes, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University.

Himes said she believes obesity is a direct result of diet and exercise practices, and there are currently many kids who are not active at all. She said she thinks the government could play a role in helping the obesity problem.

‘I think they can increase emphasis on high school physical education programs and create more classes that encourage students to practice healthy lifestyles,’ she said.

What a child learns from a parent is also important, she said. Parental health behaviors will ‘trickle down’ to the child in a negative or positive way, depending on how those behaviors are practiced, she said.

‘Think of it as a national security issue,’ she said. ‘If we aren’t going to have enough recruits that are physically fit, then obesity becomes a national security problem.’

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Published on October 26, 2010 at 12:00 pm