Working Paper: NBER ID: w25480
Authors: Dora Costa; Noelle Yetter; Heather Desomer
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 CivilWar (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.
Keywords: health shocks; socioeconomic status; mortality; Civil War veterans
JEL Codes: I12; J24; N12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| severe wounds (I12) | postwar socioeconomic status (P36) |
| severe wounds (I12) | mortality rates (I12) |
| severe wounds (I12) | socioeconomic status of veterans' children (I24) |
| severe wounds (I12) | daughters' marriage choices (J12) |
| paternal wounds (J12) | daughters' mortality rates (J13) |