 Surviving the Deluge: British servicemen in World War IRoy E. Bailey, Timothy Hatton and Kris Inwood Economics & Human Biology, 2023, vol. 49, issue C Abstract: We estimate the correlates of death and injury in action during the First World War for a sample of 2400 non-officer British servicemen who were born in the 1890s. Among these 13.1% were killed in action and another 23.5% were wounded. Not surprisingly we find that the probability of death or wounding increases with time in the army and was higher among infantrymen. For a serviceman who enlisted in the infantry at the beginning of the war and continued in service, the probability of being killed in action was 29% and the probability of being either killed or wounded in action was 64%. We examine, for ordinary soldiers, the hypothesis that death and injury was more likely for those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds as is suggested in the literature on the ‘lost generation’. While such selectivity applies when comparing officers with other ranks it does not apply among the ordinary soldiers who comprised 95% of the army. Keywords: First World War; British servicemen; Death or injury in action (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:eee:ehbiol:v:49:y:2023:i:c:s1570677x22001125 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2022.101216 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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