Jason M Ward

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2020 directed the Secretary of Defense to report on food insecurity among members of the armed forces and their dependents. RAND researchers examined the eight elements from the directive (including an assessment of the current extent of food insecurity among service members and their dependents) and developed answers, along with listing areas requiring additional analysis.

In support of the Thirteenth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, the authors of this report provide input on setting the level of military pay and the annual adjustment to military pay. They conclude that the U. S. Department of Defense should raise the benchmark it uses to set military pay and change the way it calculates the annual increase in military basic pay.

The authors provide information on how the fit between the Basic Allowance for Housing and area housing prices has evolved for Army personnel and the implications of that fit for the adequacy of housing for Army personnel.

Using an updated version of RAND's Recruiting Resource Model, the authors analyze the relationship between observed and alternative mixes of Army spending on recruiting resources (advertising, recruiters, and bonuses) and recruiting outcomes, particularly contracts and accessions. Results indicate that TV advertising and, to a lesser extent, recruiters are more cost-effective than bonuses at increasing enlistments.

This report documents research and analysis conducted as part of a project entitled Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Special and Incentive Pays in the Army, sponsored by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. The purpose of the project was to help the Army determine how to best increase incentives for higher performance among enlisted members and to more efficiently achieve Army retention objectives.

Proposition HHH is a $1.2 billion bond intended to produce 10,000 units of housing aimed at addressing chronic homelessness in Los Angeles. The author presents evidence that the project labor agreement attached to the initiative significantly affected project size and construction costs of HHH-funded developments. These findings may help inform future debate about how best to balance trade-offs between housing policy and labor regulations.

Attempts by the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) to address persistent challenges with software development have been hampered by an inability to identify the many software professionals working within DoD's programs. In this report, the authors identify and characterize a subset of DoD's software workforce, the types of software developed within DoD, and the variety of methods DoD programs use when employing that workforce to develop software.