This project explores the impact of exposure to military combat on social inequality. This issue has taken on increased social and policy significance in light off ongoing combat operations involving the United States' armed forces. Since the fall of 2001, more than 700,000 US military personnel have served in combat zones in or around Iraq and Afghanistan (O'Hanlon and Kamp 2006). Of these, more than 2,000 have been killed, nearly 16,000 have been injured by hostile fire, and thousands more have been evacuated from combat zones for psychological treatment. If prior wars are any indication, many returning wartime veterans will struggle for years with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), even if they suffered no physical injuries during their time in a combat zone (Erickson, Wolfe, King, King, and Sharkansky 2001; Hoge, Astron, Messer, McGurk, Getting, and Koffman 2004). Given the well-established links between health, employment, and socioeconomic outcomes, this proposal seeks to extend previous research on the health and mental health consequences of combat into a realm that has received relatively little attention: the effects of combat exposure on veterans' ability to work and earn in their later civilian lives. It will bring together insights on the effects of combat on physical and mental health with research on the more general effects of military service on veterans' education, training, earnings, and occupational and marital status. The overall aim of this project is thus to estimate the long-term effects of combat exposure on socioeconomic attainment.
The specific aims are to: 1. Estimate the cross-sectional effects of combat exposure on earnings and employment history, and its differential effects for veterans of different eras, races, classes, and ranks. We will also explore the extent to which the effects of combat exposure are mediated by health and disability. 2. Estimate the longitudinal effects of combat exposure, modeling 10-year changes in the socioeconomic attainment of individuals. This will allow an assessment of how the effects of combat exposure change over the life course. The project will use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Surveys of Veterans to estimate models in which health, employment and earnings are outcomes affected by combat exposure and era of service. It will test the sensitivity of the results to omitted variable bias by estimating propensity scores with Rosenbaum bounds. It will also compare the results obtained with models in which veterans report combat exposure to models based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in which veterans report serving in combat occupational specialties during peacetime. ? ? ? ?
| Maclean, Alair (2011) The stratification of military service and combat exposure, 1934-1994. Soc Sci Res 40:336-348 |
| Maclean, Alair; Parsons, Nicholas L (2010) UNEQUAL RISK: COMBAT OCCUPATIONS IN THE VOLUNTEER MILITARY. Sociol Perspect 53:iii-iv |
| Maclean, Alair (2010) The Things They Carry: Combat, Disability and Unemployment among US Men. Am Sociol Rev 75:563-585 |
| Maclean, Alair; Edwards, Ryan D (2010) The Pervasive Role of Rank in the Health of U.S. Veterans. Armed Forces Soc 36:765-785 |
