Wartime health shocks and the postwar socioeconomic status and mortality of union army veterans and their children

Dora Costa, Noelle Yetter and Heather DeSomer

Journal of Health Economics, 2020, vol. 70, issue C

Abstract: We investigate when and how health shocks reverberate across the life cycle and down to descendants in a manual labor economy by examining the association of war wounds with the socioeconomic status and older age mortality of US Civil War (1861–5) veterans and of their adult children. Younger veterans who had been severely wounded in the war left the farm sector, becoming laborers. Consistent with human capital and job matching models, older severely wounded men were unlikely to switch sectors and their wealth declined by 37–46%. War wounds were correlated with children's socioeconomic and mortality outcomes in ways dependent on sex and paternal age group.

Date: 2020
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Working Paper: Wartime Health Shocks and the Postwar Socioeconomic Status and Mortality of Union Army Veterans and their Children (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:70:y:2020:i:c:s0167629619300463

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102281

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