Research Summaries

Back Retention Rates influenced by Marine Corps Pay Incentives (Continuation)

Fiscal Year 2019
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department NPS Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Bacolod, Marigee P.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary In today’s uncertain budgetary environment, sequestration, and constrained resources, the Marine Corps finds itself needing precise estimates of the relationship between compensation and retention. In addition, policy initiatives such as Force of the Future and recent changes to the retirement system may require dramatic changes from traditional compensation and employment schemes. In order to most efficiently manage the active duty inventory and ensure the Corps is continuously manned with the highest quality Marines, the Deputy Commandant for Manpower & Reserve Affairs requires a thorough understanding of how Marines respond to compensation elements. The Marine Corps has decades of empirical data on the continuation behavior of individual Marines, but since it is all under the legacy retirement system it provides limited information with respect to how Marines might behave under the new retirement system.

While base-pay and retirement compensation has been relatively stable over time, there has been substantial variation in the special pays and allowances that the Marine Corps has offered since 2000. We will build on recent work that meticulously cataloged the evolution of such pays and allowances that is a critical initial step in this analysis. We will observe the extent to which Marines take advantage of these special pays and allowances over the time-period of our study and estimate the corresponding elasticity of supply. This will enable us to gain insight into the return on investment of these programs, as well.

The ability to relate changes in compensation to changes in willingness to continue on active duty is crucial to anticipating the effects of the Blended Retirement System and other initiatives as well as estimating the Return on Investment for any special pay program.

Deliverables include a thorough literature review, a thesis and a white paper that summarizes, amplifies relevant aspects, and fills in any gaps in the analysis in the thesis.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal