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VETERAN STATUS
Data on veteran status, period of military service, and years of military service were derived from
answers to long-form questionnaire Item 20, which was asked of a sample of the population 15
years old and over.
Veteran status. The data on veteran status were derived from answers to long-form
questionnaire Item 20a. For census data products, a civilian veteran is a person 18 years old and
over who, at the time of the enumeration, had served on active duty in the U.S. Army, Navy, Air
Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard in the past (even for a short time), but was not then on active
duty, or who had served in the Merchant Marine during World War II. People who had served in the
National Guard or Military Reserves were classified as veterans only if they had ever been called or
ordered to active duty, not counting the 4 to 6 months for initial training or yearly summer camps.
All other civilians 18 years old and over were classified as nonveterans.
Period of military service. People who indicated in long-form questionnaire Item 20a that they
had served on active duty in the past (civilian veterans) or were on active duty at the time of
enumeration were asked to indicate in Question 20b the period or periods in which they served.
People who served in both wartime and peacetime periods are tabulated according to their
wartime service.
The responses to the question about period of service were edited for consistency and
reasonableness. The edit eliminated inconsistencies between reported period(s) of service and the
age of the person; it also removed reported combinations of periods containing unreasonable
gaps (for example, it did not accept a response that indicated that the person had served in World
War II and in the Vietnam era, but not in the Korean conflict).
Years of military service. People who indicated in long-form questionnaire Item 20a that they
had served on active duty in the past (civilian veterans) or were on active duty at the time of
enumeration were asked whether they had spent at least 2 years in total on active duty. The
question asked for accumulated service (i.e., total service), which is not necessarily the same as
continuous service. The years of military service question provides necessary information to
estimate the number of veterans that are eligible to receive specific benefits.
Limitation of the data. There may be a tendency for the following kinds of people to report
erroneously that they had served on active duty in the armed forces: (a) people who served in the
National Guard or Military Reserves, but were never called to active duty; (b) civilian employees or
volunteers for the USO, Red Cross, or the Department of Defense (or its predecessors, the
Department of War and the Department of the Navy); and (c) employees of the Merchant Marine or
Public Health Service. There is also the possibility that people may have misreported years of
service in long-form questionnaire Item 20c because of rounding errors (for example, people with
1 year 8 months of active duty military service may have mistakenly reported 2 years or more).
Comparability. Since census data on veterans are based on self-reported responses, they may
differ from data from other sources, such as administrative records of the Department of Defense
and/or the Department of Transportation. Census data also may differ from Department of
Veterans Affairs data on the benefits-eligible population, since criteria for determining eligibility
for veterans benefits differ from the rules for classifying veterans in the census.
The questions and concepts for veterans data for Census 2000 were essentially the same as
those used for the 1990 census, with the following exceptions: (1) the period of military service
categories were updated; (2) in an effort to reduce reporting error, the format of the years of
military service question was changed from an open-ended one (how many years has...served?) to
a closed-ended one (the respondent checked either of two boxes: less than 2 years/2 years or
more); and (3) persons with service during World War II in the Womens Air Forces Service Pilots
organization were first counted as veterans in Census 2000, a development that should not
appreciably affect 1990-2000 comparability. Both the 2000 and 1990 veteran-status questions
represented expanded versions of the corresponding question in the 1980 census, which asked
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U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000
only whether the person was a veteran or not. The expansion was intended to clarify the
appropriate response for persons currently in the armed forces and for persons whose only
military service was for training in the Reserves or National Guard.
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