Research has shown that military service is linked with some forms of political
engagement, such as voting, especially for minorities. In this paper, we explore the
relationship between military service and another measure of civic engagement—
volunteering. Military service can help to overcome barriers to volunteering by helping
to socialize people with a norm of civic responsibility, by providing social resources and
skills that compensate for the lack of personal resources, and by making people aware of
opportunities to volunteer and “asking” them to do so. The data used to explore this
research question are from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) 2005
September supplement on volunteering. We find that military service is positively
related to volunteering among blacks and Hispanics. Married veterans and veterans over
the age of 65 are more likely to volunteer than nonveterans.LBJ School of Public Affair
