Health, wartime stress, and unit cohesion

Evidence from Union Army veterans

Bibliographic Data

ID10969355
AuthorsDora L Costa (0000-0002-0874-7366, UCLA and NBER, corresponding author), Matthew E Kahn (0000-0002-3334-9132, UCLA and NBER)
Year2010
Volume47
Issue1
Pages45-66
Publication date2010-02-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDemography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0070-3370 • E-ISSN: 1533-7790
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/dem.0.0095
PMID20355683
OpenAlexW2019731650
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited47

We find that Union Army veterans of the American Civil War 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 exogenous

Battlefield · Environmental health · Geography · Mortality rate · Population · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Climate Change and Health Impacts · Demography · Employment and Welfare Studies · Health disparities and outcomes · History · Medicine · Surgery · Gerontology

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