The Supply Side Drivers of Recruitment in the Pakistan Army

C. Christine Fair Anirban Ghosh March 11, 2012 Words: 11,039

1. Introduction to the Puzzle

Pakistan attained independence following the breakup of the British Raj in 1947. Since then, Pakistans army has governed Pakistan, indirectly or directly, for most of the states existence.1 In recent years, Pakistan has been the source of extensive nuclear proliferation, both horizontal to other non-nuclear statesand verticalan increase in the quality and quantity of its own arsenal.2 In addition, Pakistan has for decades been connected to international, regional, and domestic Islamist militancy.3 Since the 1980s, Pakistans army, under its first covert and later overt nuclear umbrella and acting principally through the intelligence agency it controls (the

Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistans Military Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2007); Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). 2 Paul K. Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin, Pakistans Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues (Washington D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2011). 3 Arif Jamal, A History of Islamist Militancy in Pakistani Punjab (Washington D.C: The Jamestown Foundation, 2011); C. Christine Fair, The Militant Challenge in Pakistan, Asia Policy 11 (January 2011): 105-37; Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan, and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 19472004 (New York: Routledge, 2007); Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military; Rizwan Hussain, Pakistan and the Emergence of Islamic Militancy in Afghanistan (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005); Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
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Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI), has become increasingly brazen in its support for Islamist militants operating in India, particularly Indian-administered Kashmir.4 In light of these discomfiting facts, international and Pakistani analysts fear that the Pakistan army is Islamizing and that elements of the force are becoming increasingly sympathetic to or infiltrated by Islamist militants.5 Under these conditions, some analysts and commentators speculate that the integrity of the army itself may be compromised, with the result that militants may acquire the know-how necessary to build a nuclear weapon, if not a device itself.6 These fears are further galvanized by the longstanding role that the army and the ISI have played in raising, training, financing, and directing a raft of Islamist militant organizations that menace the region and, increasingly, the world beyond South Asia.7 Thus the mention of the Pakistan army conjures up in the minds of many the frightening vision of

S. Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair and Jamison Jo Medby, Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear UmbrellaIndian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001). 5 George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report - Pakistan and its Army, 6 November 2007. Available at http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/CFAWC/Contemporary_ Studies/2007/2007-Nov/2007-11-06_Pakistan_and_its_Army.pdf (accessed 9 March 2012); Jonathan Paris, Prospects for Pakistan, (London: The Legatum Institute, 2010); Frdric Grare, Pakistan: The Myth of an Islamist Peril (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006). 6 Karin Brulliard, Pakistans top military officials are worried about militant collaborators in their ranks, The Washington Post, 17 May 2011; Raza Rumi, The Spectre of Islamist Infiltration, The Friday Times, 27 May 2011; Syed Saleem Shahzad, Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike, The Asia Times, 27 May 2011; Voice of America, Two Soldiers Convicted in Musharraf Assassination Attempts, VOA News, 24 December 2011; David Leigh, WikiLeaks cables expose Pakistan nuclear fears: US and UK diplomats warn of terrorists getting hold of fissile material and of Pakistan-India nuclear exchange, The Guardian, 30 November 2010; Muqaddam Khan and Azaz Syed, Ex-soldier, brothers held on Tarbela attack suspicion, The Daily Times, 15 September 2007; Jane Parlez, Pakistan Retakes Army Headquarters; Hostages Freed, The New York Times, 10 October 2009. 7 Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military; Hussain, Pakistan and the Emergence of Islamic Militancy in Afghanistan; Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan; Paris, Prospects for Pakistan; C. Christine Fair et al., Pakistan: Can the United States Secure an Insecure State? (Santa Monica: RAND, 2010); Julian Schofield and Michael Zekulin, Appraising the Threat of Islamist Take-Over in Pakistan, Research Note 34 (Montreal: Concordia University, 2007).
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international Islamist terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and using them to menace the international community. Despite these pressing concerns, very little of an empirical nature is known about the Pakistan army. Given the importance of the institution to regional and international security, general scholarship on the Pakistan Army is surprisingly thin or dated. Stephen P. Cohens The Pakistan Army8 remains the most empirically-based analysis of the organization. However, that volume was published in 1984, and much has transpired since Cohens research was done, most significantly the Islamizing efforts of General and President Zia ul Haq, the overt nuclearization of the subcontinent in 1998, the Kargil War with India in 1999, the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and several high-profile Islamist militant assaults in India which nearly brought the two countries to the brink of war. Ayesha Jalals The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistans Political Economy of Defence9 remains one of the best and most authoritative accounts of the rise of authoritarianism in Pakistan. However, her work is now some two decades old. Hassan Askari Rizvis Military, State and Society in Pakistan and The Military and Politics in Pakistan: 1947199710 are the most insightful treatments of Pakistans civil-military relations. Other recent works by Ayesha Siddiqa and Shuja Nawaz address the growing role of the army in the management of the state and Pakistans fraught civil-military relations.11 Still, Siddiqa, Nawaz, and others can only speculate about the composition of the Pakistan army officers corps and the determinants that influence recruitment outcomes. This essay is an effort to address this scholarly and empirical lacuna. It does so by employing rare district-level data on Pakistan armys officer recruitment from 1970 to 2002 and building upon recently-published descriptive analysis of the same data.12 Unfortunately, the
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Stephen P Cohen, The Pakistan Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistans Political Economy of Defence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 10 Hassan Askari Rizvi, Military, State and Society in Pakistan (London: Palgrave, 2000); Hassan Askari Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan: 19471997 (Lahore, Pakistan: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2000). 11 Siddiqua, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistans Military Economy; Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within. 12 C. Christine Fair and Shuja Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps, Journal of Strategic Studies 34, No. 1 (February 2011): 63-94; C. Christine Fair, Increasing Social
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dataset employed here only contains data on officers. No comparable dataset on the noncommissioned ranks is publically available. Where appropriate we discuss the limitations posed by these data. Because individual attributes of recruited officers, i.e. officer-level data, are not publicly available, we perform the next best analysis: an ecological study which examines how the attributes of districts explain changes in officer recruitment across districts and across time. To preview our argument, three principle findings are robust in our analysis. First, socioeconomic status negatively correlates with military recruitment. Second, while a fundamental measure of human capital (the ability to do simple sums) is positively associated with recruitment, once we control for a basic level of numeracy, the effect of additional male educational attainment on army recruits is negative. Third, when we compare across all districts by excluding year and district fixed effects, we find that Pakistan army officers come from districts that both are more urban and characterized by higher female education levels. In Pakistan, higher levels of female education correlate with increased social liberalism.13 These findings suggest that in recent decades the Pakistan army has recruited its officer corps from those districts in which men meet baseline educational requirements but who are increasingly poorly educated. Because we have only district level data, we can say for certain that the actual individuals recruited have these characteristics. (We cannot overcome the ecological fallacy problem of our data and analysis.) However, if these district characteristics do reflect those of the officer corps, one must query whether the diminishing educational attainment of the officer corps could have significant impact on the ability of the Pakistan army to introduce more sophisticated weapon systems and strategically assess the impact of tactical and operational decisions, among other challenges in a global environment of technological and other revolutions in military affairs. However even though the officers are coming from less financially prosperous areas, they continue to hail from more socially liberal communities, as indicated by the positive effect of female educationeven if we cannot say that the officers themselves have such characteristics. Conservatism in the Pakistan Army: What the Data Say, Armed Forces and Society (forthcoming 2012). 13 Samina Malik and Kathy Courtney, Higher education and womens empowerment in Pakistan, Gender and Education 23, No. 1, (January 2010): 2945.
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The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. After a brief description of how the Pakistan army recruits, we describe the analytical methods and empirical specification that we employ to test these hypotheses. In this section we also present a conceptual model of army recruitment generally and of the Pakistan army in particular. We also suggest several hypothesized relationships between recruitment outcomes and the posited independent variables that follow our conceptual model. In the fourth section we present our results, followed by an exposition of the several robustness tests we conducted. We conclude with some reflections upon the implications of our findings.

2. Pakistan Army Recruitment14

Pakistans army is an all-volunteer army. However, both officers and enlisted personnel join the Pakistan army with the expectation that their period of service will fill much of their productive lives. This expectation marks a point of difference with the recruitment of both officers and enlisted ranks in the U.S. army, where officers and enlisted alike join the military with relatively short initial service obligations (ranging from two to six years for enlisted personnel and at least five years in active service and an additional three years in the reserves for officers commissioned from a service academy). Recruits join the U.S. armed forces for many reasons, and few officers or recruits will make a career out of service.15 Some persons join the army, either as officers or enlisted, to obtain better education while in uniform through active-duty educational opportunities. Others (mostly enlisted personnel) serve in the military to obtain educational benefits, such as the Montgomery G.I. Bill, which help soldiers who honorably complete their terms of service pay for higher education. Still others will join the army in part to receive loan repayment assistance for education already completed. For many, service in the

14

For a more detailed account of army officer recruitment, see C. Christine Fair and Shuja Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps, Journal of Strategic Studies 34, No. 1 (February 2011): 63-94; Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army: A Woman's Experience on the Frontline of the War on Terror (Westport: Dialogue, 2011). 15 For a breakdown of retention rates by seniority, see Beth J. Asch et al., Cash Incentives and Military Enlistment, Attrition, and Reenlistment (Santa Monica: RAND, 2010).
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U.S. army will comprise an important phase in the persons career but will not be his or her only vocation.16 In this sense, the Pakistan army differs substantially from the U.S. army. Whereas the U.S. army, at times, has struggled to retain high-quality enlisted and even officers when their contracts are complete; when individuals join the Pakistan army, they do so with an expectation of serving in that institution for the duration of their careers. Enlisted personnel typically retire after eighteen years of service, although they can serve up to thirty-four years.17 Officers are subject to an up or out rule and typically retire between the ages of 52 and 60, depending upon the maximum rank they obtain before they are passed up for promotion and thus retire. The principal institution involved in training Pakistani army officers is the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) at Kakul. Each year, the PMA commences two long courses, with one cohort inducted in the spring and another in the fall. After graduating from the two-year program called the long course, cadets are commissioned with the rank of second lieutenant.18 The selection process is extremely competitive, with far more applicants than billets: each year there are roughly 3,000 applicants for about 320 cadet places in each regular long course.19 Candidates must satisfy a number of eligibility criteria: they must be single, hold at least an intermediate degree (i.e., 12 years of schooling), and be between 17 and 22 years of age . Recruits must obtain a score of at least 50 percent in their matriculation (10th grade) or FA (12th grade) exams.20 Applicants undergo initial testing and screening at eight regional selection and recruitment centers across the country: Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Multan (in the province of the Punjab); Hyderabad and Karachi (in the province of Sindh); Quetta (in the province of
16

Asch et al., Cash Incentives and Military Enlistment, Attrition, and Reenlistment; Beth J. Asch, Can Du, and Matthias Schonlau, Policy Options for Military Recruiting in the College Market: Results from a National Survey (Santa Monica: RAND, 2004); Beth J. Asch, M. Rebecca Kilburn, and Jacob Alex Klerman, Attracting College-Bound Youth into the Military: Toward the Development of New Recruiting Policy Options (Santa Monica: RAND, 1999). 17 Official Pakistan Army Recruitment Website, FAQs, n.d. Available at: http://www.joinpakarmy.gov.pk/. 18 Fair and Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps. 19 Fair and Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps. 20 Official Pakistan Army Recruitment Website, Induction: PMA Long Course.
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Baluchistan); Peshawar (in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK, formerly NWFP); and Gilgit (in the administrative area of Gilgit-Baltistan, previously known as the Northern Areas).21 Selected candidates then proceed to the Inter-Services/General Headquarters Selection and Review Board in Kohat or to satellite centers in Gujranwala (Punjab), Malir (Sindh), or Quetta (Balochistan) for further screening. Successful candidates are then recommended for the PMA. Each year, the Army General Headquarters determines the precise number of slots for PMA cadets based upon regimental reports of shortfalls. As the previous discussion indicates, officer selection is generally based upon on merit, with the exception of episodic efforts to increase recruitment from underrepresented provinces such as Sindh and Balochistan.22

3. Data and Methods

While changes in the individual attitudes and attributes of new officers in the Pakistan Army are extremely important, officer level for the Pakistan army data do not exist. (Nor do such data exist for enlisted personnel.) The cooperation of the Pakistani government and of the army in particular would be absolutely necessary for the collection of officer-level data, and such cooperation is exceedingly unlikely to be forthcoming within any relevant time horizon. Fortunately, recent district-level data on aggregate officer accessions and retirement between 1970 and 2005 offer some insights into the ways in which variation in the characteristics of officer-producing districts explains variation in district-level recruitment trends.23 The recruitment data we use are the annual numbers of candidates accepted into the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, aggregated by the officers home district. (The district is the level of governance below the provincial level, which in turn is below the federal government.) Areas of origin also include the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Kashmir, and GilgitBaltistanareas that are not typically included in Pakistans federal surveys. The dataset also includes district-level aggregates of the numbers of officers who retired from those districts.

21 22

Official Pakistan Army Recruitment Website, Contact Us. Fair and Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps. 23 Fair and Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps.
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The optimal empirical approach to explaining the determinants of officer recruitments would require officer-level data, currently publicly unavailable, on the social, economic, and attitudinal characteristics of individual officers. Thus this study perforce takes a second best approach that models the relationship between changes in officers home districts across time and officer recruitment across time and district. This approach provides some insights into changes in the larger social and economic environment of those districts that produce officers. This analysis cannot overcome a fundamental ecological fallacy in that we cannot assume that the characteristics of any given district are similar to characteristics of any given officer. That said, it would be difficultthough not impossibleto argue that a significant difference between the characteristics of officer-producing districts and of the officers coming from those districts could sustain itself across time and space. Despite the sub-optimal nature of the data, they do offer limited insights into the determinants of officer recruitment outcomes in Pakistan.

Data: A Brief Overview24

This study employs two kinds of data. First, it uses annual army data which provide district-level aggregated recruits and retirements between 1970 and 2005. (Figure 1 shows the annual intake of officers into the PMA, aggregated annually across all districts.)

24

For a more detailed exposition of methods, see Fair and Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps.
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Figure 1. Annual Intake of Officers for All Provinces (1970-2005)

1600

1400

1200

1000

Total Officers

800

600

400

200

0 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 Year 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Source: In-house manipulations of army officer recruitment data.

Second, it utilizes district-level estimates of economic, demographic, and social characteristics derived from the 1991, 1995, 1998, and 2001 waves of household surveys conducted by Pakistans Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS). (In 2012 the Federal Bureau of Statistics became part of a restructured organization called the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.) These survey data are derived from household surveys as well district-level assessments of facilities and government services for the four provinces of the Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, and KPK. The data are weighted appropriately to ensure that they are representative at the district level for our analysis. The analytical dataset was constructed using only those districts and years for which three conditions hold. First, recruitment data are used only for years for which household survey data are available across all waves of the FBS data. Second, recruitment data are used only for those years for which one-year lag variables (e.g. years in which data for the previous
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year were also available) could be created. (Socio-economic and other household variables may not affect recruitment outcomes in the same year.) Third, models use only those districts and years for which the full set of individual and community characteristics were collected by the FBS across all years in each district. The resultant dataset included district-level recruitment data from 1992, 1996, 1999, and 2002 and district-matched FBS data from 1991, 1995, 1998, and 2001. These cumulative restrictions yielded a data set of 343 observations. 25

Trends in Pakistan Army Recruitment

As Figure 1 shows, the Pakistan Officer Corps underwent a period of expansion in the early 1980s, with recruitment stabilizing at around 1,000 new recruits per year from 1990 onwards. While the number of officers recruited per year has remained relatively steady, there have been significant changes in the geographical composition of the Corps. In Figure 2, we attempt to demonstrate the shifts in district-level market share. (Market share for any given year is defined by the number of recruits from a given district divided by the total number of officer recruits that year.) Doing so allows us to graphically demonstrate that since the 1970s, the number of districts producing zero officers each year has decreased steadily. This trend was accompanied by a steady rise in districts that produce a small number of officers (1 to 5). In other words, over time, Pakistans officer corps is drawing from an increasingly diverse set of districts.

25

There are a maximum of 392 districts (4 years for each of 98 districts in the army data). After restrictions (e.g. districts for which there are no recruitment data in specific years), we have 343 observations.
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Figure 2. Share of districts that produce 1-5 officers per year and share of districts that produce zero officers per year.
100% 90% 80%

70%
60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 Share of Districts with Zero Recruits Share of Districts with 1 to 5 Recruits

Source: In-house manipulations of army officer recruitment data.

This observation is consistent with a trend of recruiting officers from smaller and more remote districts. Figure 3 further illustrates this trend for the timeframe used in this analysis (1992-2002). Figure 3 demonstrates that those districts which were the highest producers of officers in 1992 (Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Karachi) had all lost market share by 2002. The other districts in the top ten in 1992 (Sargodha, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Sialkot, Gujrat, Islamabad, and Jhelum), which in that year accounted for 28% of all new recruits, also steadily lost market share over this period, producing less than 21 percent of new recruits in 2002. In contrast, the other districts under study experienced a more than ten percent increase in market share between 1992 and 2002.

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Figure 3. The share of officers recruited from Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi, the other top 10 districts, and all other districts.
60.0% 50.0% Share of Officer Recruits 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 42.5% 37.2% 27.8% 17.8% 6.4% 5.5% Share 1992 17.8% 6.4% 5.5% 27.8% 42.5% Share 1996 19.9% 11.2% 6.9% 24.7% 37.2% 42.7% 53.4%

24.7% 19.9% 11.2% 6.9%

23.0% 18.5% 10.0% 5.8% Share 1999 18.5% 10.0% 5.8% 23.0% 42.7%

20.6% 15.3% 6.6% 4.1% Share 2002 15.3% 6.6% 4.1% 20.6% 53.4%

0.0%
RAWALPINDI LAHORE KARACHI Districts 4th to 10th in 1992 All Other Districts

Source: In-house manipulations of army officer recruitment data.

The increasing geographical diversity of the officer corps is also displayed in a graphical depiction of officer recruitment figures by district. Figure 4 presents the share of officer recruits by district for 1992, 1996, 1999, and 2002. Darker colors correspond to districts with higher market share. Districts that did not produce any officers are in grey. This alternative representation confirms our earlier observation that the Pakistani army is becoming more geographically diverse. Finally, Figure 5 demonstrates the change in market share for districts between 1992 and 2002. Those districts depicted in shades of blue are net losers while those colored either orange and red are net gainers. As Figure 5 illustrates, the losing districts tend to be in the Punjab while the gainers are in Balochistan, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

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Figure 4. Share of Officer Recruits by District: 1992, 1996, 1999 and 2002.

Officer Shares 1992

Officer Shares 1996

Officer Shares 1999

Officer Shares 2002

Legend Percentage share of Officer Recruits from a given district

Source: In-house manipulations of army officer recruitment data.

Figure 5. District-level Shifts in Market Share of Officer Recruits between 1992 and 2002

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Source: In-house manipulations of army officer recruitment data.

Despite the persistence of claims that the Pakistan army is a Punjab-dominated organization, it is clear from the foregoing empirical analysis and discussion that the Pakistan army officer corps is more geographically diverse than at any time in the past. (N.B: We cannot assume that geographical diversity is isomorphic to ethnic diversity. It is entirely possible that

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recruits from Balochistan or elsewhere are ethnically Punjabi. However, it would be difficult to contend that Punjabis from Balochistan would share the views of their co-ethnics in the Punjab. Thus, even though we cannot instrument ethnic change, it is still a reasonable assumption that the changing geographic base of the army has brought with it a diversification of views). While increasing geographic diversity can be clearly established, it is less clear whether this development has any socio-economic correlates. Does the change in officer recruitment outcomes mean that officers are recruited from less-urban or less-educated districts, or is the recruitment strategy employment-driven? To answer these questions, we investigate officer production through an econometric framework whereby we relate district-level socio-economic variables to district-level officer recruitment.

4. Conceptual Model of Pakistan Army Recruitment

The scholarly work on military manpower focuses heavily on enlistment of soldiers rather than accession of officers. Research on officer accessions tends to be the purview of military institutions, government agencies, or policy institutes.26 We present a conceptual framework for understanding accessions to the Pakistani officer corps that is based on a similar model developed by scholars of the U.S. army.27 Since this is a simple model of labor supply, there is

26

Casey Wardynski, David S. Lyle, , Michael J. Colarusso, Accessing Talent: The Foundation of a US Army Officer Corps Strategy (Carlisle Barracks PA: Amy War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2010); Kevin D. Stringer, The War on Terror and the War for Officer Talent: Linked Challenges for the U.S. Army, Land Warfare Paper No. 67 (Arlington, VA: The Institute of Land Warfare, 2008); Charles A. Henning, Army Officer Shortages: Background and Issues for Congress (Washington D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2006). 27 John T. Warner, Curtis J. Simon, and Deborah M. Payne, The Military Recruiting Productivity Slowdown: The Roles Of Resources, Opportunity Cost And The Tastes Of Youth, Defence and Peace Economics 14, No. 5 (October 2003): 329342; Bruce R. Orvis and Beth J. Asch, Military Recruiting: Trends, Outlook, and Implications (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001); Bruce R. Orvis, Narayan Sastry, and Laurie L. McDonald, Military Recruiting Outlook: Recent Trends in Enlistment Propensity and Conversion of Potential Enlisted Supply (Santa Monica: RAND, 1996); Beth J. Asch and Bruce Orvis, Recent Recruiting Trends and Their Implications (Santa Monica: RAND, 1994).
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no obvious reason why recruitment in Pakistan army, also an all-volunteer force, should not be driven by similar considerations.28 This literature suggests several factors that likely affect an individuals likelihood of joining the Pakistan army officer corps. A first consideration is the influencer market. In studies of U.S. military recruitment, analysts consistently find that areas whose inhabitants are positively disposed towards service in the armed forces tend to produce persons with a higher propensity (or taste) for military service.29 A second cluster of drivers is the fundamental human capital endowments of the person and other facets of their socio-economic standing (SES) in their communities. Volunteer armies, like other hirers of labor, have quality and aptitude standards which must be met as a precondition for selection into the force. A third cluster of factors pertains to features of the labor market: the competing opportunities available to an individual (dependent on his human capital endowments education, experience, aptitude, etc.) and thus the opportunity cost of enlistment. Presumably, persons have more economic opportunities during periods of economic growth and fewer during economic retrenchment.30 As discussed above, recruitment in the Pakistan army officer corps is highly similar to U.S. army recruitment. First, the recruitment process imposes baseline educational and literacy standards. At the same time, young men whose education level exceeds the minimum required may choose more profitable career paths. This is true despite the fact that the Pakistan army offers numerous perquisites that are increasingly lucrative for those who achieve higher ranks. For lower-ranking officers, the armys compensation is unlikely to compete with the private

28

For the use of a similar approach to examine re-enlistment decisions in the Turkish armed forces, see Jlide Yildirim and Blen Erdin, The Re-Enlistment Decision In Turkey: A Military Personnel Supply Model, Defence and Peace Economics 18, No. 4 (August 2007): 377-389 and Jlide Yildirim, Nebile Korucu, and Semsettin Karasu, Further Education Or ReEnlistment Decision In Turkish Armed Forces: A Seemingly Unrelated Probit Analysis, Defence and Peace Economics 21, No. 1 (2010): 89-103. 29 Warner et al., The Military Recruiting Productivity Slowdown; Orvis et al. Military Recruiting Outlook; John H. Faris, The All-Volunteer Force: Recruitment from Military Families, Armed Forces and Society 7, No. 4 (1981): 545-559. 30 Warner et al., The Military Recruiting Productivity Slowdown.
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sector, especially given the hardships of frequent permanent changes of station (as opposed to temporary duty postings) and time spent away from family.31 A fourth set of considerations includes the various transaction costs associated with seeking military employment (e.g. distance to a recruitment center, cost incurred in traveling to such a center, etc.) and the resources available to military recruiters and related bureaucracies. In the United States, these transaction costs can be substantially lowered with recruitment effort and utilization of recruiting resources. Recruiters are based in high schools, will come to a recruits home to meet with parents and to complete all paperwork, and will even ensure that a student has transportation to the various appointments and evaluations required. In order to facilitate the youths decision to enlist, the U.S. army deliberately deploys its own resources to decrease the costs incurred by a recruit. (To a lesser extent, this is true even for officer accessions.) Unsurprisingly, U.S. recruiter effort and skill have been found to be important factors in the armys ability to meet its accession targets in a supply-limited market.32 In Pakistan, however, the situation is starkly different. Because officer recruitment is demandconstrained with a full order of magnitude more recruits that slots at the PMA, the Pakistan army has no incentive to lower the barrier to pursue the army as a career. In fact, the reverse is true: the ability of the potential officer to navigate the logistical and other aspects of the recruitment process may be self-selecting for quality, motivation, and resourcefulness. In effort to model district-level recruitment outcomes, we employ the theoretical approach employed by Dale and Gilroy33 and by Warner and Asch.34 Dale and Gilroy model the determinants of military enlistment rates in the United States as a function of: the business cycle (as a measure of competition for recruits); the level of military pay compared to compensation offered by other employment opportunities; the various benefits of enlistment,
31 32

Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within.

James N. Dertouzos and Steven Garber, Human Resource Management and Army Recruiting: Analysis of Policy Options (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corp., 2006); James N. Dertouzos and Steven Garber, Performance Evaluation and Army Recruiting (Santa Monica: RAND Corp., 2008). 33 Charles Dale and Curtis Gilroy, The Economic Determinants of Military Enlistment Rates (Arlington, V.A.: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1983). 34 John Warner and Beth Asch, The Economics of Military Manpower, in Handbook of Defense Economics: Volume I, eds. Keith Hartley and Todd Sandler (Amsterdam: Elsevier 1995), 347-398.
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such as recruitment bonuses and educational benefits for the recruit and family members; expenditure on recruiting and advertising (as a measure of recruitment resources expended to convert persons with propensities to join the military into actual recruits); and time-specific indicators, such as a dummy for GI Bill expiration and seasonal indicators. Warner and Asch employ a model which takes the equilibrium number of enlistees in the US military as the dependent variable. Their independent variables include military pay, baseline eligibility requirements, and recruiter effort. An important contribution of secondgeneration research on military recruitment, such as that of Warner and Asch, is the recognition that recruiter effort plays an important role in both the quantity and the quality of the recruited personnel. This is because, in the United States, recruitment is generally supply constrained, with the US military struggling to make its recruitment targets. This is an important departure from the Pakistani context, which is extremely demand constrained. Thus recruiter efforteven if it were available to uslikely would be irrelevant to this case.35 Both Dale and Gilroy36 and Warner and Asch37 use familiar empirical specifications of a reduced form equation, where the dependent variable, the number of military personnel recruited or enlisted, is modeled on a number of independent variables which they contend affect military recruitment outcomes. We are forced to modify their empirical specifications somewhat for this study because there are facets of the recruitment process that we cannot observe without individual level data. However, we can develop hypotheses about district-level observables and how they may relate to district-level outcomes, both across districts and across time. We also modify our approach to account for the unique attributes of the Pakistan army. In particular, as discussed above, we know that every year there are more people in Pakistan who want to be part of the officer corps than there are positions offered, with the result that the number of recruits is demand-constrained. Thus our paper focuses on the supply-side drivers of army recruitment in Pakistan.

35

Admission to the PMA is very competitive. Each year there are roughly 3,000 applicants and, on average, about 320 cadet places in each regular long course in the PMA. See Fair and Nawaz, The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps and Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army. 36 Dale and Gilroy, The Economic Determinants of Military Enlistment Rates. 37 Warner and Asch, The Economics of Military Manpower.
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First, we hypothesize that a basic level of human capital is necessary to satisfy the Pakistan armys recruitment demands. However, individuals with more than this level of education will likely pursue private sector jobs.38 Our proxies for human capital include the ability to do simple sums and the average years of schooling for males in the district. (The literacy measure was too unreliable to use.) We expect the former to be positively correlated to recruitment as this variable should not have diminishing margins of return. In contrast, we expect that male educational attainment will be non-linear: most Pakistani males do not meet the educational requirement of 12 years and those who have pursued education beyond 12 years will likely seek employment in the private sector. According to the most recent (1998) Pakistani census, 87 percent of Pakistanis do not have more than a tenth grade education. The remainder of the population is divided roughly equally between those with twelve years of education (less than 7 percent) and those with more than twelve years of education (also less than 7 percent).39 Thus, 12 years is the optimal education level for officer production: educational attainment levels higher or lower than 12 years result in a lower probability of becoming an officer. Similarly, we expect higher socio-economic status of a district to be negatively correlated with recruitment outcomes. Available information on the Pakistan army suggests that its officers to a growing extent no longer come from elite families but rather from the middle class and upper lower class. In fact, sons of enlisted noncommissioned officers are increasingly joining the ranks of the army corps.40 We use the number of private high schools in a district to proxy the socio-economic characteristics of a given district in a given year. While at first blush one would expect little variation in this figure, in fact variation is considerable, likely owing to the fact that private schools in Pakistanas elsewhereaggregate local demand for elite education and are typically more expensive than public schools. Thus private schools open and close subject to market conditions. Therefore, we expect the coefficient on private high schools to be negative, since the parents of children going to comparatively more expensive
38 39

Author field work in Pakistan between 2002 and 2010. Pakistan Population Census Organization, Educated Population by Level of Education, 1998. Available at: http://www.census.gov.pk/LevelofEducation.htm. 40 Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army; Cohen, The Pakistan Army.
19

private high school are more likely to consider tuition an investment leading to further education and well-compensated private sector opportunities rather than military service. We also use district-level Gini coefficients as a measure of income disparity in the district. The sign on this variable is difficult to predict a priori. Given that the army officer corps increasingly draws from non-elite families, one could argue that the sign should be positive. However, in the Pakistan context, middle and upper-lower class families may be less likely to produce sons who meet the basic educational and aptitude requirements or even the basic physical fitness requirements. Another important district characteristic that we use in our model is the share of households in the district that live in an urban area (percent urban). We expect urban districts to produce more officers, if for no other reason than most of Pakistans recruitment centers are in cities (e.g. Peshawar (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa); Rawalpindi, Lahore, Multan (Punjab); Hyderabad, Karachi (Sindh); Quetta (Baluchistan), and Gilgit (Gilgit Baltistan)).41 Cities in Pakistan tend to be better served by public transportation and thus travel within them would not require overnight stays in hotels. In contrast, persons in rural areas are less served by recruitment facilities and would have to undertake costly journeys to apply. Therefore, we would expect that urban districts, all else being equal, will produce more officers. To proxy for labor market conditions, we use average male wages in the district, labor force participation rates, and the share of the population made up of males between 20 and 29. (This age bracket is the closest available proxy for the target age group of the officer corps.) We expect districts with better labor market opportunities to produce fewer officers, all else being equal. We also expect the number of recruits to be negatively correlated with both male wages and labor force participation, and positively correlated with the share of eligible men in the population. While we cannot account for individual tastes without individual level data, we can say something about the relative progressive or conservative orientation of the districts which produce officers. As a proxy for individual taste and preferences, we include variables for female educational attainment and womens average age at marriage. If the army is recruiting
41

Pakistan Army Official Recruitment Website, Home.

20

from districts that are more socially conservative, then we expect the coefficient on these variables to be negative, and vice versa if the army is recruiting from more progressive districts. These variables also offer some insight on the trends in piety and conservatism within the office corps. As a proxy for the influencer market, we include the districts past history of producing officers. Given the recent information that sons of junior non-commissioned officers are increasingly entering the officer corps,42 enlistment figures are presumably also an important component of this influencer or network effect. However, we are not in a position to control for this. Relying only upon officer recruitment data, we expect that districts with greater officer production in the past will be more likely to supply officers in the present. The reasons for this expectation are two-fold. First, the community of officers (retired and serving) in the district is likely to foster a more favorable view of military service.43 Second, the presence of retired and currently serving officers also likely produces strong network effects and information asymmetries between relatively recruitment-heavy districts and recruitment-sparse districts. For example, potential recruits in recruitment-rich districts can more easily seek counsel from other officers on how best to prepare for the selection process (including physical and intellectual tests and several interviews) than those in districts with little or no history of army service. While these network effects are important, over the time period used here (19922002), we expect them to be relatively constant. We anticipate that the district level fixed effects proxy both any unexplained district shocks or other features outside of our model, but also any network effects. These variables and the hypothesized relationships are summarized in Table 1.
42 43

Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army. Officers in the Pakistan army receive numerous perquisites at various points in their careers, including lucrative real estate in exclusive areas of Pakistans cities. Officers can sell these properties at market rates and turn a considerable profit. Army personnel (both retired and serving officers and enlisted men) have access to their own hospitals and schools, which are better than those available to the general population. Retiring officers receive lucrative appointments, either at the Armys vast foundations or at private sector companies with connections to the army. One of the biggest Army foundations is the Fauji Foundation (lit. Army Foundation), which manufactures everything from cornflakes to concrete. For a detailed discussion, see Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistans Military Economy.
21

Table 1. Hypothesis Table with Proxy Variables and Expected Effects

Variables Hypothesized Relationship to Recruitment Outcomes Reason

District-average male education attainment District-average numeracy The number of private high schools in a district District Gini

Negative Positive Negative Positive

Average educational attainment for a district will exhibit decreasing marginal returns in recruit production. A minimum level of ability necessary to be an army recruit. Same reason as male educational attainment Greater inequality, accompanied by fewer job opportunities outside of the army, will positively affect district recruitments. Urban districts, which proxy transaction costs, will produce more officers, all else being equal District-level labor market indicators will negatively affect district recruitment. District-level labor market indicators will negatively affect district recruitment. Size of market for recruits If army is recruiting from more conservative districts, the sign is negative, and vice-versa. If army is recruiting from more conservative districts, the sign is negative, and vice-versa.

Share of population living Positive in urban areas of a district District male wages Negative Labor force participation for the district Share of population in a district made up of males between 20 and 29 District-average female educational attainment Average age of marriage for women in the district Negative Positive A priori ambiguous A priori ambiguous

Analytical Methods and Empirical Specification

The variable of interest for this study is the number of officers that are recruited from a given district, i, for a given year, t. Thus, we use the empirical specification: Rit = Xi,t-1 + i + t + it (equation 1)

where Rit is the number of officers recruited from district i at time t. X is a vector of independent variables which we believe influence army officer recruitment in Pakistan, as described above. We lag the independent variables by one year to model a more intuitive
22

chronology according to which there is a time lag between the decision to join the army and the actual act of joining the officer corps.44 Moreover, the economic situation in a given year could not conceivably influence propensity to join the military in the same year, but are more likely to do so in the following year. We model the error term to have a year specific element, t, a district specific element, i, and an independent element. Thus, when we use year and district fixed effects, the resulting model can be estimated using ordinary least squares regression, and the s are the coefficients of interest.45 Similar specifications of army recruitment have been used by other analysts of military manpower to model army recruitment in the United States.46 Benmelech, Barrebi and Klor47 use a similar specification when modeling the quality and production of suicide bombers in Palestine. In addition to modeling the number of army officer recruits in a given year for each district, we also model a second dependent variable, net recruits, which is the number of army officer recruits less the number of officers who retire from the army into this district. This measure of net recruits gives us a measure of the change in net supply of army officers from a district in a given year. Table 2 shows the summary statistics of the two dependent variables and the set of independent variables used in this study. Note that for each district, we have 4 years of data. For the dependent variables, the years are 1992, 1996, 1999, and 2002. For the independent variables, the years of observation are 1991, 1995, 1998, and 2001. (This is because these variables are lagged relative to the dependent variable.) On average, each year less than 10 army officers are recruited from any given district; however, there is large variance across districts. Unsurprisingly for Pakistan, the mean number of years of education for males, at 7.1 years, is higher than for females, at 5.9 years. Numeracy is defined as the share of the

44 45

The lag structure may also alleviate any reverse causality, at least to some extent. We also cluster the errors at the district level in all our specifications. 46 e.g. Dale and Gilroy, The Economic Determinants of Military Enlistment Rates; Warner and Asch, The Economics of Military Manpower. 47 Efraim Benmelech, Claude Berrebi, and Esteban F. Klor, Economic Conditions and the Quality of Suicide Terrorism, The Journal of Politics 74, No. 1 (Jan. 2012): 113-128.
23

population that is able to do a simple math problem. The remaining variables are selfexplanatory and discussed above.

Table 2. Summary Statistics of Dependent and Independent Variables

Observations Number of Districts Mean S.D. Min Max

Recruits Net recruits Male Wages in 000s Private high schools District Gini Percentage urban Share of population, Males 20 to 29 Male years of education Female years of education age at marriage females Labor force participation Numeracy

343 343 343 343 343 343 343 343 343 343 343 343

98 98 98 98 98 98 98 98 98 98 98 98

9.53 8.95 27.15 1.06 0.5 0.31 0.08 7.11 5.9 19.18 0.22 0.67

20.23 18.81 18.99 3.93 0.14 0.4 0.01 1.54 1.96 2.42 0.12 0.21

0 -1 1.75 0 0.18 0 0.04 2.92 1 15.29 0 0.2

194 170 197.11 66 0.82 1 0.12 10.96 13 26.23 0.5 1

5. Results
In Table 3, we present the results of the main regressions in our study, using recruits and net recruits as our independent variables. In Model 1, we model district recruitments (our dependent variable) as a function of several independent variables without any year or district fixed effects. In Model 2, we augment Model 1 by including year and district fixed effects. This is important because we suspect that district fixed effects may also instrument for network effects that facilitate officer recruitment from districts with a history of officer production. Our suspicions about network effects are borne out in the data: for example Rawalpindi is the only district that recruited in excess of a hundred officers in each of the years in our data. (Rawalpindi, home to the Armys General Headquarters, remains an important destination for officer retirements due its amenities there and proximity to the nations capital, Islamabad.) Statistically, the average variance of the number of recruits across districts, at 18.3, is 3 times higher than the average variance within a district, 6.24. This statistic shows that high-producing
24

and low-producing districts retain this attribute across time an argument for the need for district level fixed effects. The results of Model 1 provide evidence that the Pakistan army recruits from more urban districts. The districts of Lahore or Quetta, which are more urban than Haripur or Khushab, produce greater number of officers. Similarly, Model 1 results indicate that the army recruits from districts with higher female attainment. However, as shown in Model 2, when we augment Model 1 with district and year fixed effects, urbanicity per se ceases to be significant, as does female attainment. More interestingly, when fixed effects are included, the number of private high schools in a district and the level of male educational attainment are both negative and statistically significant, at least at the 5% level. (Without district and year fixed effects, the number of private high schools is not significant.) Numeracy is positive and significant at the 5% level in Models 1 and 2. However, labor force participation is slightly significant only in the model with both district and year fixed effects. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for our hypothesis that once we control for a basic level of numeracy, the effect of additional educational attainment on army recruits is negative. These findings persist whether we measure education directly, through average years of schooling, or indirectly, through the number of private high schools (which can be seen as a signal of intention to go on to college). Next, we further investigate the relationship between educational attainment and officer recruitment by allowing education to have non-linear effects on recruitment outcomes. However, we do not find support for our hypotheses that wages (average male wages), inequality (as measured by district Gini coefficients), and size of the recruit pool (share of male population of the district that is between 20 and 29 years of age) affect officer recruitment. In Model 3 and Model 4, we employ net recruits (defined as the difference between new officer recruits and retirees in a district at time t) as our dependent variable, modeling it as a function of the same set of independent variables, with and without district and year fixed effects. Our a-priori expectation is that the same variables that affect recruitment will also affect net recruits, and in the same direction. This assumption is largely borne out by comparing the
25

results of Model 2 (full models of recruits) and Model 4 (full model of net recruits). Private high schools and male education are negative and significant in both models, and numeracy is positive and significant, although in the model with net recruits the significance is only at 10%. Other variables that are significant at the 10% level in the net recruits model but not in the recruitment model are female years of education and age at first marriage. Age at first marriage proxies social liberalism, with more socially liberal families choosing to marry their daughters at an older age. (In Pakistan most marriages are arranged by the family rather than according to the preferences of the young men and women in question.) The principle insight drawn from these results is that the Pakistan army is increasingly recruiting from districts with lower male education levels and lower numbers of private high schools (a proxy for investment in higher quality education). Nonetheless, while the army is recruiting from increasingly lower-educated districts, prospective officers still meet certain minimum requirements. This is shown by the positive and significant coefficient on the numeracy variable, which measures a general literacy level. Taken together, this suggests that the Pakistan army no longer receives the cream of the elite families.48 Other variables which we hypothesized would be significant predictors of army recruitment appear to have no impact once we account for district-level and time fixed effects. These variables include percentage of the population that is urban and mean years of female education. District level inequality, male wages, and share of the male population between the ages of 20 and 29 are never significant. This is probably a consequence of the supplyunconstrained nature of the recruiting process. Should there be a time when the supply of men willing to join the army becomes a binding constraint, we would expect the district economic indicators to become significant.

48

Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within; Cohen, The Pakistan Army; Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army.
26

Table 3 Drivers of Pakistan Officer Recruitment (1) recruits 0.0873 (0.0694) 0.3154 (0.2096) -8.3601 (12.3083) 16.0343** (6.4016) -26.6408 (60.1386) -2.2890** (0.9674) 1.9933** (0.8011) 0.8259 (0.6322) -11.1733 (7.7576) 7.2160** (3.3643) (2) recruits -0.0049 (0.0259) -0.1523*** (0.0384) -0.2044 (4.2542) -2.5168 (1.9390) -32.4076 (40.7425) -0.9504** (0.4733) 0.3807 (0.2473) -0.5477 (0.3696) 8.0097* (4.5799) 3.6517** (1.7550) -4.5842 (3.0063) -3.1282* (1.7911) -6.4842** (2.6535) 27.7557*** (8.1002) Yes 343 0.2023 98 (3) Net recruits 0.0918 (0.0690) 0.2721 (0.1886) -8.0667 (11.4676) 14.8673** (5.9161) -30.4165 (56.9457) -2.0488** (0.8805) 1.9445** (0.7498) 0.8462 (0.6016) -9.7608 (7.3061) 6.2011** (3.0857) (4) Net recruits 0.0033 (0.0281) -0.1594*** (0.0349) 0.5774 (3.7938) -1.2640 (1.5482) -27.5729 (30.4288) -0.8487** (0.4056) 0.3834* (0.2061) -0.4981* (0.2995) 6.0198 (3.8071) 2.9399* (1.5108) -3.0214 (2.2550) -1.2671 (1.4309) -4.2419* (2.1511) 23.5360*** (6.7649) Yes 343 0.1795 98

Variables Male Wages in 000s Private high schools District Gini Percentage urban Males 20 to 29s Share of population Male years of education Female years of education age at marriage females Labor force participation Numeracy yr1996 yr1999 yr2002 Constant District Fixed Effects Observations R-squared Number of districts

-5.7047 (9.2742) No 343 0.1856 98

-7.2853 (9.0484) No 343 0.1876 98

Notes: OLS coefficients with errors clustered at the district level. The omitted year is 1992. Standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

27

Non-Linear Effects of Education on Recruitment

The results presented in table 3 indicate that the average level of male education in a district is negatively correlated with officer recruitment from that district. This result is robust and persists across all four models, both with and without fixed effects, and whether we measure gross or net recruitment. Because of the specification used in Model 1 through Model 4, we force the marginal effect of an additional year of education to be the same for every level of education. However, we suspect that the returns on male education are non-linear, as described above, with district average educational levels below or above 12 years negatively predicting recruitment outcomes. Empirically testing this supposition is difficult with the current data: the only measure of education available is averaged at the district level, and thus does not offer the granularity required to instrument for the optimal (individual) level. When measuring district-level educational attainment, we need to factor in the low levels of attainment of the general population. Figure 5 presents the distribution of district-level average male attainment in our sample. It is similar to that of Pakistans census data, with fewer than 12 percent of districts reporting average male attainment equal to or in excess of nine years. (According to the Pakistan Population Census Organization,49 about 13 percent of all persons have attained more than ten years of education.) In the previous section (Models 1 through Model 4), our specification of either recruits or net recruits restricted the male education coefficient to have the same marginal effect for each additional year of education, regardless of the level of education. (That is, our specification forced the relationship between male education and recruitment outcomes to be linear.) For example, per the results from Model 2 (in Table 3), if the district-average male education attainment level increases by 1 year, the expected number of officers being recruited from this district diminishes by 0.95 officers. However, if there is indeed an optimal level of education (hovering at or slightly above 12 years of education), there should be varying

49

Pakistan Population Census Organization, Educated Population By Level Of Education.

28

marginal effects of education upon recruitment outcomes, with education at the optimal level having the greatest positive effect on recruitment, and negative effects observed below or above this optimum. In our data, the district-average male educational variable ranges between 2.9 to 10.9 years (see Figure 5). To measure these different marginal effects, we estimate the unrestricted response of district education levels to officer recruitment. To do so, we create a series of indicator variables which take the value of 1, if the district falls in a given category described above, and 0 if it does not. We model these dummy educational attainment variables on the dependent variable, officer recruits. In Table 5 we report the results this analyses. The excluded variable in these regressions is the 9-and-over category, so all the other dummy variables are compared to that category. While 9 years is still below that required to qualify for the officer corps, this figure is the district average in which males will have less but also more than nine years of education. (This is also the highest category of educational attainment we have in these data). To examine the possible non-linear relationship between average male education and officer recruitment outcomes in a district, we test specifications with and without the two other variables related to education, numeracy, and number of private schools excluding outliers, and finally the full specification of table 3 model 2, with the male education variable unrestricted. All specifications have both year and district fixed effects, with errors clustered at the district level. Figure 5 the distribution of the average years of education by district in Pakistan, 1992-2002.
30.0% 25.0% 20.0% 17.4% 10.9% 17.6% 16.2% 11.5% 26.3%

15.0%
10.0% 5.0% 0.0%

29

Source: In-house data analysis.

Results for model 1 and 2 in Table 5 suggest that there is an optimal level of education, with the highest recruitment coming from districts with average male education between 5 and 6 years. When we control for the number of private high schools and numeracy, we see further that those districts with years of education between 5 and 6, 6 and 7, and 7 and 8 are high officer-producing districts. We also consistently observe that districts with average education levels greater than 8 years, or less than 5, are not significant producers of officer recruits. In addition, we estimate (in models 3 and 4) the specification without outliers;50 the conclusions remain the same. Both in terms of magnitude and significance, the districts with education level between 5 and 6 years produce the greatest number of recruits. Moreover, the coefficient decreases for higher years of education, becoming statistically insignificant when the average years of education exceed 8. In model 5, we reproduce the full model from table 3, model 2; however, in this specification male education is captured by a series of dummy variables. Once we control for all the other variables, as we move towards progressively less education levels, we increase the expected number of officer recruits from these districts. This is consistent with the previous finding of a negative coefficient on mean years of education. Moreover, with the added flexibility in this specification, we can see from the magnitude of each coefficient that there is an optimal level of education. A district average of between 5 and 6 years of male education produces the greatest number of officer recruits (followed by the 6 to 7 years bracket). This analysis provides further support for our original conclusion that Pakistan Army is likely to recruit officers from districts with lower levels of education. Additionally, we provide evidence that the greatest officer-producing districts are those with average education levels between 5 and 6 years. Consistent with our expectation, inhabitants of districts with higher levels of male education, i.e. 8 years or more on average, usually indicate a preference for opportunities outside the officer corps of the Pakistan Army.

50

Districts with over 100 recruits are excluded. In the next section, we run additional robustness checks.
30

31

Table 4 Drivers of Pakistan Officer Recruitment with an unrestricted male education specification Variables Male Wages in 000s Private High Schools District Gini Percentage urban Males 20 to 29s Share of Popl Male Education less than 5 yrs Male Education 5 to less than 6 Male Education 6 to less than 7 Male Education 7 to less than 8 Male Education 8 to less than 9 Female years of education Age at marriage females Labor force participation Numeracy yr1996 yr1999 yr2002 Constant District FE Observations R-squared Number of alt_district_int 2.3647 2.2720 (1.5692) (1.4642) -6.3650*** -6.6996*** -5.3549*** -5.6646*** (1.4185) (1.4556) (1.0008) (1.0272) -1.5926 -1.8985* -1.3804 -1.6642* (0.9725) (0.9831) (0.8989) (0.9045) -3.8045*** -4.3601*** -3.0135** -3.5477*** (1.4313) (1.4991) (1.1903) (1.2617) 9.0841*** 7.8237*** 8.4460*** 7.2148*** (1.5743) (1.7637) (1.1967) (1.4071) Yes 357 0.1848 98
32

(1) Recruits

(2) recruits

(3) recruits

(4) recruits

(5) recruits 0.0073 (0.0302) -0.1564*** (0.0392) -0.3524 (4.2040) -1.8089 (1.7626) -28.5886 (41.0309) 4.2836** (2.0806) 6.0404** (2.3846) 4.9029** (2.1031) 4.4431** (1.9906) 2.0734 (2.1567) 0.4500* (0.2604) -0.4354 (0.3744) 6.7714 (4.8486) 3.2506* (1.7776) -5.9049 (3.5793) -4.1613* (2.4398) -7.3047** (3.2851) 15.1565** (7.5446) Yes 343 0.2203 98

-0.1633*** (0.0402)

-0.1493*** (0.0407)

2.4779 (1.9941) 5.2388** (2.5200) 3.8000* (1.9996) 3.6621* (1.8589) 1.5491 (1.8463)

2.4594 (2.0629) 5.4168** (2.5509) 4.1308** (2.0462) 3.8526** (1.8910) 1.6788 (1.8327)

1.5644 (1.7095) 3.0048** (1.2557) 2.0628** (1.0127) 2.0293** (0.9836) 0.1996 (1.3582)

1.5528 (1.7906) 3.1824** (1.3062) 2.3807** (1.0902) 2.2249** (1.0482) 0.3585 (1.3670)

Yes 357 0.1950 98

Yes 353 0.1996 97

Yes 353 0.2146 97

Notes: OLS coefficients with errors clustered at the district level. The omitted year is 1992. Omitted male education variable is districts with more than 9 years of average male education. Standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

6. Robustness Checks
To evaluate the robustness of our principle findings, presented for Models 2 and 4 in Table 3, we perform a series of diagnostics to ensure that they are not driven by outliers in either dependent variable. For Model 2 the dependent variable is gross recruits; for Model 4, net recruits. The results of these analyses are presented in Table 5. The first column (A) in Table 5 replicates the results of Model 2 after eliminating the top one percent of the observations in gross recruits. Thus we evaluate this model using only the bottom 99 percent of gross district recruitment for all years. (This removes outliers from the right side of the distribution.) This resulted in the dropping of all four years of observations from the Rawalpindi district. To further evaluate the sturdiness of estimates of Model 2 in Table 3, we eliminate all of the districts that did not produce any officers in that year. (Many districts in the sample in various years produced no officers.) Doing so results in a sample of 228 observations. The results of this exercise are available in the second column (B) of Table 5. This analysis demonstrates that three principal findings from Model 2 in Table 3 are robust. Namely, the number of private schools is significantly and negatively correlated with officer recruitment at the 0.01 level. (Recall that the number of private schools in a district aggregates demand for elite education and proxies the socioeconomic status of the district.) Second, male educational attainment is also negatively correlated at the 0.1 level. Third, numeracy is positively and significantly correlated at the 0.1 level. Next we evaluate the robustness of Model 4 in Table 3, where we estimate net recruits as a function of independent variables as well as of district and year fixed effects. To do so, we estimate this model after eliminating the top and bottom one percent of the net recruit observations. As with our evaluation of Model 2 (Table 3), three findings remain consistent. As shown in the third column (C) of Table 5, number of private high schools and male educational attainment are significantly and negatively correlated with net recruitment, whereas numeracy positively and significantly predicts net recruitment.
33

Lastly, we want to ensure that we are not observing a spurious correlation between recruitment outcomes and one or more of our independent variables, suggesting a relationship between recruitment outcomes and general development trends in Pakistan. To do so, we estimate a first difference model based upon Model 2 in Table 3. In this first difference model, we estimate the between-year change in gross recruits as a function of between-year changes in each of the independent variables employed. (Note that we exclude fixed effects in this first difference model because they are invariant dummy variables.) These results are presented in the fourth column (D) of Table 5. We find that two results endure: namely, private high school inventory and male educational attainment are significantly and negatively correlated with recruitment outcomes.

34

Table 5 - Robustness Checks of Models 2 and 4 (Table 3) (A) Variables Recruits (B) Recruits (C) Net recruits Evaluates Model 4, Table 2 0.0603 (0.0623) -0.1615*** (0.0420) -3.2237 (5.5930) -1.3478 (2.3346) -42.6505 (44.6380) -2.0132*** (0.7496) 0.3863* (0.2310) -0.3310 (0.4991) 10.4266 (6.6001) 0.6999 (2.2420) (D) Recruits-All variables are in first difference

Evaluates Model 2, Table 3 Male Wages in 000s Private high schools District Gini Percentage urban Males 20 to 29s Share of population Male years of education Female years of education age at marriage females Labor force participation Numeracy yr1996 yr1999 yr2002 Constant Observations R-squared Number of districts

Evaluates Model 2, Table 2

-0.0026 0.0607 -0.0136 (0.0244) (0.0616) (0.0176) -0.1470*** -0.1422*** -0.1785*** (0.0410) (0.0475) (0.0343) 0.2382 7.0963 -0.0911 (4.0929) (6.7071) (3.6171) -2.0557 -3.3997 -0.8644 (1.8208) (2.4093) (1.4783) -1.0737 -72.7130 -9.3401 (25.4270) (70.0515) (21.5943) -0.6335* -1.7712* -0.5468* (0.3445) (0.9268) (0.2991) 0.2772 0.7103 0.2769 (0.2182) (0.4679) (0.1788) -0.6141* -0.5048 -0.5073* (0.3324) (0.7514) (0.2781) 4.5480 7.3051 3.2231 (2.9080) (6.8572) (2.6297) 3.5578** 6.4830* 2.6002* (1.6513) (3.5368) (1.4177) -3.0432 -7.5953 -2.2390 (2.3781) (5.0338) (1.9839) -2.3495 -3.5913 -1.1518 (1.4913) (3.1210) (1.2851) -4.9443** -9.2196** -2.9889* (2.0836) (4.3855) (1.7789) 22.7122*** 33.3029** 19.9696*** (7.2037) (13.0638) (5.8755) 339 228 338 0.2304 0.2884 0.2166 97 75 97

-0.0738 (3.5715) 236 0.2514

Notes: OLS coefficients with errors clustered at the district level. The omitted year is 1992. Standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

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7. Discussion and Implications

This paper provides clear evidence that over time the geographical base of Pakistani officer corps recruitment has extended beyond the traditional stronghold of the Punjab. Furthermore, we have obtained three principle robust findings from our efforts to employ regression analysis to determine the drivers of district-wise recruitment outcomes. First, within a given district and year, both the numbers of private schools in a district and the average level of male educational attainment correlate negatively with officer production. Second, numeracy (e.g. the ability to do simple math) does not exhibit diminishing margins of return and remains positively correlated with officer production. Third, when we compare across districts by excluding year and district fixed effects, we find that army recruits in Pakistan come from districts that are more urban and boast higher female education levels. However, this finding is no longer significant once we take district and year fixed effects into account. Thus a district which is more urban (such as Karachi, the megacity in Sindh) will have more recruits than a district less urban (such as Loralai, in sparsely populated Balochistan). But this does not mean that, had Karachi been less urban in a particular year, it would have seen a decrease in recruitment in that year. These conclusions have several possible implications. First, the negative correlation between education and recruitment is worrisome, as is that between recruitment and the presence of private schools. Whereas in the past, the Pakistan army drew from Pakistans elites, this is evidently no longer the case; better-educated men are pursuing other careers. As modern warfare continues to evolve and as Pakistan seeks to introduce ever more complex weapons systems, the receding human capital pool may render the army less able to optimize these new systems, if not preclude their comprehensive induction in the first instance. Given the widening gap in conventional military capabilities between Pakistan and its principle nemesis, India, this may be cause for alarm for those responsible for Pakistans defense. While this is worrisome from the point of view of military effectiveness, it need not have implications for the orientation of the army with respect to social conservatism. Despite the common belief that poorer Pakistanis are more inclined to support militancy, this is not borne out by robust studies of Pakistani opinion. A 6,000 person survey fielded among a nationally
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representative sample of Pakistanis using a unique method (endorsement experiment) found that while in general Pakistanis exhibit a weak support for militancy, poor Pakistanis dislike militant groups more than their middle-class counterparts.51 The survey determined that this effect is strongest for the urban poor, who tend to be more exposed to the negative externalities of militant violence. On average, the study found that poor people in urban areas exhibit an aversion to Islamist militant groups that is nearly three times stronger than for poor Pakistanis overall and six times stronger than for Pakistanis as a whole. These findings become stronger as the definition of poverty is restricted. Without individual-level data, inclusive of socio-economic factors, it is very difficult to discern whether officers are coming from the militant-averse urban poor or the less-averse middle class populations.52 The present study uses an ecological approach to offer limited insights into the drivers of officer recruitment. Clearly there is room for more detailed work in this area. While no data sources for a more granular study currently exist, it would not be complicated to collect such data. Such an effort would be resource-intense, however. It would require a multi-stage sample which would first establish the distribution of military households across Pakistan and then draw a sample that would allow researchers to obtain insights into the characteristics of military households relative to other households. But even such an ambitious effort would likely not allow analysts to look below the household level. Given the pressing concerns about ideological trends in the Pakistani army, the present effort suggests a clarion call for more, and more in-depth, research.

51

Graeme Blair et al., Poverty and Support for Militant Politics: Evidence from Pakistan, (2 May 2011). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1829264. 52 Blair et al., Poverty and Support for Militant Politics: Evidence from Pakistan.
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