Which U.S. States Have the Highest Percentage of Population that Are Veterans? Alaska Tops the List! [OC]
Posted by OverflowDs
Which U.S. States Have the Highest Percentage of Population that Are Veterans? Alaska Tops the List! [OC]
Posted by OverflowDs
20 comments
The data used in this analysis comes from the American Community Survey (ACS). The survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau is a premier source of information on demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics. If you want to explore more data like this, you can check out our [State Data Explorer](https://overflowdata.com/state-data/) for more information and comparisons of each state.
Non states (U.S. Territories) like American Samoa and Guam have very high levels of recruitment
Is Utah so low because of the mission trips Mormons make or is there something else at play?
Alaska has a higher male to female ratio than other states.
Not many chloropeths put New York, California and Utah all in the same group.
Other big outlier is Virginia which makes sense given all the defense spending and post-retirement career opps.
Something about joining the military just makes you want to never see civilization again, I guess.
Not exactly what I was expecting…would also be interesting to see a map showing the ratio of active duty personnel to veterans by state.
Why so little participation from NY and CA?
Honestly interesting, since raw numbers for active duty military goes California THEN Virginia. Though make sense since California has 4-5x more people in general to Virginia.
[https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-number-of-active-duty-troops-in-each-u-s-state-2024/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-number-of-active-duty-troops-in-each-u-s-state-2024/)
I’d like to see what definition of “veteran” is being used here.
This is just a map of military base locations
Considering most of Alaska’s economy is either resource extraction or federal jobs, I’m not surprised.
I suspect that the placement of American military bases has a strong correlation to the number of veterans in a particular state. Families end up moving with the soldier(s) every posting.
Nebraska is lower, but making efforts to attract Vets and retired military. Military pay, active, reserve, guard, disability, or pension are exempt for income taxes or for the sliding scale on homestead property taxes exemptions.
Regarding Utah, it has one of the most urbanized populations of all states. It is very dry so most of the state is empty. Enlistment is higher in rural areas so that might also play a part.
I’d be interested to compare this to the same thing broken down by the county.
The only major indicator of a pattern berr is virginia.
No surprise that they don’t want to live in California or NY. Veterans know the benefit of self defense, and those two states restrict gun ownership more than most.
This also seems like current population and not where people are from maybe?
Alaska, Virginia, Montana, and Wyoming topping the list makes a lot of sense. Virginia is the political heart of the country, with DC, Langley, and Quantico. Military service springboards a lot of politicians. The other two hire a lot of veterans.
The other three states are prime territory for buying some land and getting the heck away from everyone. If you know veterans, you know why that’s attractive.
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