Killed in and after Action: The Long-lasting Effects of Combat Exposure on Mortality

TL;DR

This paper investigates the long-term mortality effects of combat exposure using Vietnam War draft data, revealing significant excess mortality among Black men in the earliest cohort and highlighting the importance of cohort selection in such analyses.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach by modeling draft eligibility as an outcome to identify long-term mortality impacts of combat exposure.

Findings

Significant excess mortality among Black men in the 1950 cohort

Limited combat exposure in later cohorts reduces detectable effects

Pooling cohorts can obscure true treatment effects

Abstract

This study examines long-term mortality effects of combat exposure using the Vietnam War draft lottery as a quasi-experiment. We validate the lottery by analyzing combat fatalities, revealing that 1951-1952 cohorts had notably fewer lottery-induced deployments than 1950, limiting detectable long-term mortality impacts at the cohort level. Using deceased-only datasets, we invert standard identification by modeling draft eligibility as the outcome. We find significant excess mortality among Black men in the 1950 cohort (1.09\%, approximately 2,700 additional deaths), and null effects in later cohorts. Findings suggest that pooling cohorts with limited combat exposure may prevent detection of true treatment effects at cohort levels.