Analyzing U.S. military retirement policies

Abstract

A system dynamics model of retirement policies in the U.S. Department of Defense explicitly represents how military personnel respond to changes. Analysts can, for example, use the model to study how reductions in retire ment benefits affect accession and maintenance pay pol icies. In a case study, these interactions dramatically af fected cost estimates for proposed changes. The feedback effects in the system dynamics model showed important, unanticipated consequences from reducing retired pay. In teractions between different policy areas (such as retire ment, recruitment, and force maintenance) seldom show up in current models because of the complexity of representing them and because most modeling teams are assigned to a single policy area.