The Mortality Cost Metric for the Costs of War

Abstract

Estimates of the costs of war include the financial costs and the lives that are lost. Using estimates of the value of a statistical life and the value of a statistical injury, the health losses can be converted to a common monetary metric and added to the budgetary costs. Counting the monetary value of the direct war-related fatalities and injuries plays a relatively greater role for the Vietnam War than for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. This article proposes an alternative war cost metric that also recognizes the lives that are also lost because economic resources are diverted to war efforts. All costs are converted to mortality costs using a measure of the mortality opportunity cost to the public of war-related expenditures. Recognition of these indirect mortality effects approximately triples the number of fatalities attributable to the post-9/11 wars. The relative role of these indirect mortality losses is less for the Vietnam War because of that war’s higher rate of fatalities compared to financial costs.

The Mortality Cost of Expenditures

“…Using the mortality cost of expenditures estimates presented in this article, it is feasible to estimate the mortality costs associated with these economic dislocations. Similarly,Viscusi (2019) uses the mortality cost of expenditures to calculate the net mortality costs of the Vietnam War and all recent Middle East wars. While a net mortality cost impact analysis of wars or a pandemic is feasible, a comprehensive benefit–cost assessment of these events is much harder.…”

Extending the Domain of the Value of a Statistical Life

“…Have changes in the technology of conflicts and the political costs associated with high mortality rates led to a shift in the composition of war-related costs? The analysis in Viscusi (2019b) addresses these issues for the Vietnam War and the post-9/11 wars using estimates of the VSL pertinent to the particular time periods for these conflicts -$1.9 million for the Vietnam War in 1974 and $8.9 million for the post-9/11 wars, in 2010. For purposes of these calculations, injuries were converted to fatality equivalents based on the ratio of the value of a statistical injury and the VSL.…”

“…5 Improved medical treatment of the injured to reduce the death rate from any given injury also may have increased the ratio of the number who were wounded to the number who were killed. Valuing the risk of military injuries using the same value of a statistical injury level as is appropriate for occupational fatalities generally, as is done in Viscusi (2019b), may understate the severity of the adverse health impacts incurred by the military.…”