Work

Health, wartime stress, and unit cohesion: Evidence from Union Army veterans

Year: 2010

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: Demography

DOI: 10.1353/dem.0.0095

Authors: Dora L. Costa, Matthew E. Kahn

Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, University of California, Los Angeles

Language: English

Topic: Health disparities and outcomes

Subfield: Health

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development