 The Mortality Cost Metric for the Costs of WarPeace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2019, vol. 25, issue 3, 10 Abstract: Estimates of the costs of war include the financial costs and the lives that are lost. Using estimates of the value of a statistical life and the value of a statistical injury, the health losses can be converted to a common monetary metric and added to the budgetary costs. Counting the monetary value of the direct war-related fatalities and injuries plays a relatively greater role for the Vietnam War than for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. This article proposes an alternative war cost metric that also recognizes the lives that are also lost because economic resources are diverted to war efforts. All costs are converted to mortality costs using a measure of the mortality opportunity cost to the public of war-related expenditures. Recognition of these indirect mortality effects approximately triples the number of fatalities attributable to the post-9/11 wars. The relative role of these indirect mortality losses is less for the Vietnam War because of that war’s higher rate of fatalities compared to financial costs. Keywords: mortality risk; opportunity cost; value of a statistical life; war (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:25:y:2019:i:3:p:10:n:2 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy is currently edited by Raul Caruso More articles in Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy from De Gruyter |
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