Methodology

To identify America’s military cities, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the number of active duty military personnel as a share of the total population at the metropolitan statistical area level.

Data on the number of active duty service men and women in a metro area came from the 2018 Demographics Report, originally published by Military OneSource, a U.S. Department of Defense contractor. Demographics data was aggregated from the zip-code level to the metropolitan statistical area level. Data on metro area population came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey.

We also considered the number of veterans and dependents of active duty service men and women at the metro area level. Data on veterans, or civilians who formerly served in a branch of the military but who are no longer enlisted, also came from the ACS. Total number of dependents of military personnel living in a given metro area came from the 2018 Demographics Report.

In addition, we considered metro area-level data for total military expenditures from the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics for fiscal year 2018.