TY  - JOUR
AU  - Costa,Dora L.
AU  - Kahn,Matthew E.
TI  - Health, Stress, and Social Networks: Evidence from Union Army Veterans
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14053
PY  - 2008
Y2  - June 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14053
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14053.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Dora Costa
Bunche Hall 9272
Department of Economics
UCLA
Box 951477
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477
Tel: (310) 825-4249
Fax: (310) 825-9528
E-Mail: costa@econ.ucla.edu

Matthew E. Kahn
UCLA Institute of the Environment
Department of Economics
Department of Public Policy
Box 951496
La Kretz Hall, Suite 300
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1496
Tel: 310/794-4904
Fax: 310/825-9663
E-Mail: mkahn@ioe.ucla.edu
AB  - We find that veterans of the Union Army 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 exogeneous.
ER  -