Middle Class Zip Codes Fill Military

The Washington Times reports:

Middle-class youths, not the poor, are providing the bulk of wartime recruits to the armed forces, according to a new study by a conservative think tank.
The Heritage Foundation research paper found that a higher percentage of middle-class and upper-middle-class families have been providing enlistees for the war on Islamic militants since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Researchers matched the ZIP codes of recruits over the past five years with federal government estimates of household incomes in those neighborhoods. Contrary to complaints from some liberal lawmakers and pundits, the data show that the poor are not shouldering the bulk of the military's need for new soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines.
The poorest neighborhoods provided 18 percent of recruits in prewar 1999 and 14.6 percent in 2003. By contrast, areas where household incomes ranged from $30,000 to $200,000 provided more than 85 percent.
"We found that recruits tend to come from middle-class areas, with disproportionately fewer from low-income areas," said the report, prepared by Tim Kane, an Air Force Academy graduate and economics scholar. "Overall, the income distribution of military enlistees is more similar to than different from the income distribution of the general population."

Is it the food,the pay,who knows? Maybe the New York Times might have to adjust their thinking here or just airbrush it out of existence.