Service after Serving: Does Veterans' Preference Diminish the Quality of the US Federal Service?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Johnson, Tim
• 署名单位: Willamette University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH AND THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1053-1858
• DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muu033
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 669-696
• 关键词: Political appointees; PERFORMANCE RATINGS; civil-service; women; IMPACT; career; EMPLOYMENT; merit; advancement; INEQUALITY

摘要

Does preferentially hiring military veterans hurt US federal service quality? Using career progress to measure quality, past research finds that veterans who enter service in the four most common general schedule (GS) grades advance to higher grades more slowly than nonveterans entering in those same grades. This research, however, ignores variables that influence GS progress. Enlisting all disclosed personnel data for white-collar federal employees from 1973 to 1997, I compare the GS advancement of veterans' preference recipients and nonrecipients who start federal service in the same grade, occupation, duty station, agency, and year. When controlling for these combined traits, I find that preference recipients hold grades higher than or statistically indistinguishable from those of nonrecipients in 15 of the first 24 years of their careers. When adding controls for an employee's gender, race, age, and education, I find that recipients hold grades higher than or statistically indistinguishable from those of nonrecipients in each of the first 24 years of their careers. These results question the claim that veterans' preference has diminished federal service quality.