Health, Stress, and Social Networks: Evidence from Union Army Veterans

Dora L. Costa and Matthew Kahn ()

No 14053, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We find that veterans of the Union Army who faced greater wartime stress (as measured by higher battlefield mortality rates) experienced higher mortality rates at older ages, but that men who were from more cohesive companies were statistically significantly less likely to be affected by wartime stress. Our results hold for overall mortality, mortality from ischemic heart disease and stroke, and new diagnoses of arteriosclerosis. Our findings represent one of the first long-run health follow-ups of the interaction between stress and social networks in a human population in which both stress and social networks are arguably exogeneous.

JEL-codes: I12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-soc
Date: 2008-06
Note: AG DAE
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