Houston Veterans Talk About Changing Opinions Regarding Military Service

In 2011, Pew Research Center found that “only one half of one percent of the U.S. population has been on active military duty at any given time during the past decade of sustained warfare.”

This is most noticeable when you start looking at the generational breakdown of our population. In March, Pew released their most recent breakdowns of veterans: of male Baby Boomers, 21 percent are veterans; for Gen X-ers, it’s just 8 percent of men. And only 3 percent of males in the millennial generation enlist.

To get a better sense of changing attitudes about military service, Paige Phelps spoke with three generations of veterans to capture their views on finding themselves in such a small — and shrinking — minority.