Where Veterans Are Concentrated

Returning from active duty. Now what?

I have been working with Alex Hecht at the Warrior Family Foundation on some data to help veterans' organizations prioritize their focus and timing on rolling out innovative programs.

The first criterion we thought of was the metro areas with the most veterans. On that basis, the New York City area ranks #1, with the most veterans of any other metro area.

But as a percentage of the area population, New York and Los Angeles rank 10th and 9th out of 10. Washington, DC has the highest percentage of veterans, 9.6 percent, exactly double the percentages for New York and Los Angeles. The Atlanta area is not far behind, with 8.6 percent. (See Table 1.)

Table 1. Number of Veterans and Percent of Population, 10 Most Populous Metro Areas

Rank	Metro Statistical Area (MSA)	Pop	Vets	Percent
1	New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA	14,482	699.6	4.83
2	Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA	9,680	462.9	4.78
3	Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI	7,018	445.8	6.35
4	Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX	4,650	369.2	7.94
5	Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD	4,479	372.9	8.32
6	Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL	4,401	256.2	5.82
7	Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX	4,343	299.4	6.89
8	Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV	4,242	408.2	9.62
9	Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA	3,881	334.8	8.63
10	Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH	3,478	251.6	7.24
	Total	60,652	3,900.6	6.43

If we pick the MSAs based on total population and use 500,000 as the cutoff, the top ten MSAs for veteran concentration are led by the Virginia Beach MSA, with 17.1 percent, followed by the North Port, FL MSA. (See Table 2).

                Table 2. Top 10 MSAs for Veterans that have a Population over 500,000

	Metro Area	Veterans as percent of total population	Number of veterans
1	Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC	17.17%	211,933
2	North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, FL	14.57%	86,437
3	Jacksonville, FL	13.61%	142,461
4	Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, SC	12.78%	67,762
5	San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX Metro Area	12.37%	202,069
6	Tucson, AZ Metro Area	12.23%	93,442
7	Honolulu, HI Metro Area	12.03%	87,715
8	Albuquerque, NM Metro Area	11.86%	81,002
9	Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL Metro Area	11.79%	61,530
10	Columbia, SC Metro Area	11.65%	68,614

Here are some comments on the first two tables:

1. Veterans like to stay near bases. This is often the best place to get a civilian job. It is also a way of staying in touch with friends and of taking advantage of free programs such as training, cultural activities and base shopping. Veterans’ organizations are likely to have chapters tied to bases, where they recruit new members.

2. Veterans like warm weather. Southern locations are favored.

3. The numbers don't include active duty personnel and dependents. In the Virginia Beach metro area, if active-duty personnel and dependents are included, the share of the population accounted for by military families could rise from one out of five to one out of three.

The concentrations of veterans become even more pronounced at the county level. Of the 589 counties that include more than 100,000 residents, 14 of the top 20 are concentrated in just four states – Florida, with seven counties represented, Texas with three, and Virginia and North Carolina both with two counties.

Veterans make up 18.5 percent of the population of Citrus County, FL, which is the home of several Air Force locations and sites. (See Table 3.)

Table 3. Top 20 counties with more than 100,000 residents*

	County	Veterans as % of total pop.	Number of veterans
1	Citrus, FL	18.46%	25,730
2	Okaloosa, FL	16.78%	31,890
3	Cochise, AZ	16.74%	22,106
4	Stafford, VA	16.13%	21,674
5	Hampton Roads, VA**	15.44%	191,261
6	Kitsap, WA	15.01%	38,269
7	Hardin, KY	14.55%	15,568
8	Clay, FL	14.38%	27,955
9	Bell, TX	14.33%	46,288
10	Comanche, OK	14.26%	18,019
11	Cumberland, NC	14.23%	46,114
12	Santa Rosa, FL	14.16%	22,440
13	Houston, GA	14.00%	20,466
14	Sumter, FL	13.85%	14,071
15	Montgomery, TN	13.73%	25,331
16	Marion, FL	13.67%	45,806
17	Guadalupe, TX	13.59%	19,005
18	Escambia, FL	13.51%	40,899
19	Onslow, NC	13.40%	24,560
20	Comal, TX	13.04%	14,920

*Rank is out of the 589 U.S. counties that include more than 100,000 residents. Data are for 2012, projected from 2010 Census data, while the population data for each county are from the 2012 America Community Survey.

**The adjacent independent cities of Newport News, Hampton, Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake (collectively known as Hampton Roads) are combined.

Finally, what do we get when we look through the other end of the telescope? Where are the smallest concentrations of veterans? Answer: In big cities.

                    Table  4. Bottom 20 counties with over 100,000 residents*

	County	Veterans as percent of total population	Number of veterans
1	Kings, NY (Brooklyn)	2.12%	54,414
2	Miami-Dade, FL	2.45%	63,517
3	New York, NY (Manhattan)	2.46%	39,760
4	Webb, TX	2.49%	6,450
5	Hudson, NJ	2.51%	16,364
6	Queens, NY	2.57%	58,351
7	Bronx, NY	2.58%	36,327
8	Hidalgo, TX	2.89%	23,332
9	San Francisco, CA	3.19%	26,336
10	Los Angeles, CA	3.21%	319,623
11	Suffolk, MA	3.25%	24,201
12	Santa Clara, CA	3.35%	61,596
13	Essex, NJ	3.48%	27,410
14	Rockland, NY	3.48%	11,073
15	Utah, UT	3.49%	18,888
16	Passaic, NJ	3.61%	18,170
17	Westchester, NY	3.75%	36,076
18	Union, NJ	3.75%	20,424
19	Bergen, NJ	3.86%	35,483
20	Alameda, CA	3.88%	60,309

*Rank is out of the 589 U.S. counties that include more than 100,000 residents. See first note to Table 3.

September 17 – Birthday of the U.S. Constitution

The Constitution of the United States, signed today, 1787.

The Warrior Family Foundation takes note of Constitution Day, commemorating the birthday in 1787 of the U.S. Constitution, which was born largely out of military disarray and created the written document that has been admired throughout the world since then.

It creates the system whereby the President and Commander-in-Chief of U.S. military forces is elected along with a House and Senate. The Commander-in-Chief's budget must be initiated by the House and senior appointments and treaties must be approved by the Senate.

In 1787 The war with Britain had officially ended four years before, in 1783. But the new American government was not functioning. The United States was vulnerable to another British invasion. Yes, the Second Continental Congress had created the Articles of Confederation to outline the rights of the federal government.

But Americans were reluctant to get rid of a tyrant in London only to succumb to a new one in America. As a result:
- Not one state was paying all of its federal taxes.
- The Federal Government had no way to force collection.
- Pirates were attacking American ships with impunity.
- Troops were deserting and states felt defenseless.

Congress technically had the authority to wage war, regulate currency, and conduct foreign policy, but it had no way to force the states to supply money or troops. So James Madison and other leaders convened the Constitutional Convention to get the states to create a unified central government. In May 1787, the 55 delegates spent four months in a hot summer in Philadelphia, fighting off bloodthirsty bugs. The average age of the delegates was just 42, but overall they were highly educated. The delegates included:
• Benjamin Franklin, who at 81 had to be carried around Philadelphia in a sedan chair because he could no longer walk.
• Alexander Hamilton, who was lax in attendance but afterward emerged as the principal author of the Federalist Papers, famous essays arguing why the Constitution should be ratified.
• James Madison, who showed up every single day, took detailed notes on all the proceedings, and argued tirelessly for a strong central government. Madison was small, 5'6" and 120 pounds, but he became known as the best informed person at the convention and became known as "the Father of the Constitution."
• Governor Morris, a charming man with a peg leg, who did more than flirt with other mens' wives, gave 173 speeches and wrote the Constitution's Preamble.
• George Washington, who was immediately elected president of the Convention and rarely spoke throughout the convention.

The resulting document was not just a revision of the Articles of Confederation. It became a new document, a Constitution of the United States. The delegates eventually came to an agreement on the essential purposes of government, a system of checks and balances, the division of powers between federal and state governments, rules for interstate trade, war-making powers and representation according to population.

(John Tepper Marlin, Ph.D., is Chief Economist of the Warrior Family Foundation. His summary of the Convention is abbreviated and adapted from Garrison Keillor's comments on the day in The Writer's Almanac.)