The Employment Effects of the My Career Advancement Account Scholarship for Military Spouses: An Analysis of the 2011 Cohort

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marrone, James V.

Contributor:

Knapp, David

Miller, Laura L.

Panis, Christina

Thompson, Nathan

Trail, Thomas E.

Language:

English

Other Title:

Employment Effects of the My Career Advancement Account Scholarship for Military Spouses

Place of Publication:

RAND Corporation 2024

Summary:

Spouses of active-duty service members face additional challenges in the civilian labor market compared with their peers in nonmilitary households because of service member deployments and frequent permanent station moves. To assist military spouses in obtaining credentials or training necessary to enter portable career fields, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Military Community and Family Policy established the My Career Advancement Account (MyCAA) Scholarship program. This report describes the employment outcomes for the cohort of MyCAA users who enrolled in 2010–2011, shortly after the scholarship in its present form began, relative to a matched cohort of nonusers. RAND researchers found consistent and sustained evidence that, in 2018, spouses who used MyCAA funds had employment rates 10 percentage points higher than before they received the scholarship and 6 to 8 percentage points higher than similar nonusers up to seven years after using the scholarship. In addition, the average earnings of employed MyCAA users increased between 10 and 16 percent each year from 2014 to 2018, which is well above the national average during this period. Combined with a prior report examining MyCAA usage and service member retention, this evidence suggests that MyCAA is a successful investment in force readiness, supporting families with higher-than-average attachment to military life in strengthening the financial stability of their households and easing the constraints of military life on spouses' careers.