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 servicemen and servicewomen in a metro area came from the 2019 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 2019 American Community Survey and are one-year estimates.

We also considered the number of veterans and dependents of active-duty service members 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 2019 Demographics Report.

In addition, we considered metro area-level data for annual Veterans Affairs expenditures from the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics for fiscal year 2019.