Scoob,
What I see a lot these days is that if you disagree with someone, they are stupid or lying. To the extent that truly useful research must come to a conclusion, if someone disagrees with the conclusion it is often automatically suspect. Conversely few people are as critical of their own views when it appears to be validated by research. Heritage is as up front as the Hudson Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute. I have no problem with that. The transparency allows for a starting point in critical review. But lets not throw all these types of organizations under the bus ( that is if you are equally critical of the left of center groups). They serve a purpose. They generally approach a question just like a scientist, with a hypothesis The Heritage hypotheses is going to be conservative in nature, the position by Hudson liberal and Cato libertarian. They go out and collect data, do the rresearch generally good research because they know they will be nit picked by their oopposites. If it supports their claim they publish. And if it doesn't, no they won't publish and that is because it is a private partisan group. Just because they don't research or publish reports critical of their position doesn't make the ones they do inherently biased. Someone has to be right. And because there are organizations of their polar opposite, they will be sure to collect data, research and publish what HHeritageddecidedto table. There is nothing wrong with that and it doesn't mean either oorganizationis routinely or ppurposelypproducingflawed research to support their ppositions. I have to wonder if the same research had been done by and same conclusions reported in the New York Times if you would have given it a second thought. If the Heritage paper had been reported on in the Washington Post would it have given it a veneer of authority you don't give it now? Finding truly unbiased research is very difficult. You are certainly more likely to find it in academia, but there is plenty of bias there to go around. The problem is university research and some others (like newspapers and authors of books) are simply not ttransparentabut their biases. I for one am just as suspect of university research as I am of Cato or PPI.
Your points of concern are noted and reasonable.
1- The paper was published in 2008 soon after the data was available. Never said it held true today. BTW, the book AWOL was published in 2008. The data was not cherry picked. This paper builds on previous work and data going back to 2003. The data has to start some where. It started then, (OIF) because of public questions about who would bear the burden of "GW Bush's war."
2- There is no data set large enough to base the research on but census data. Recruits are not polled for their socio economic situation. While zip codes are referenced conclusions are based on census tract, which is much smaller.
3-Yes 18-24 would be the peer group since 87% of recruits are between those ages. High school grad rate is currently about 69%. Those over age 25 with a HSD is about 87%. So if 90% of recruits have a HSD or higher then they are better educated. Oh, and since everywhere else they mention "recruits" I think we can give them a pass on the gender thing. Slip of the tongue. Not slop shod.
For those of you who have had to wade into this, I apologies. I could have just said read the whole thing including footnotes and references. It is all there.