The long-term association between exposure to wartime bombing earlier in life and post-traumatic stress later in life among today's older Vietnamese population.

This analysis examines the relationship between exposure to American wartime bombardments earlier in life and later-life PTSD among current surviving Vietnamese aged 59+. It also assesses whether the relationship varies by military status during the war - formal military, informal military, or civilian - and whether associations are explained by exposure to violence and malevolent conditions. Data link survey responses from the 2018 Vietnam Health and Aging Study to provincial-wide level bombing intensity using U.S. Department of Defense records from the Theater History of Operations Vietnam database. PTSD measured using nine items from the PTSD Checklist. Analyses employ multivariate logistic quantile regression. Findings examined for a sample of 2290 Vietnamese survivors and a subsample of 736 Vietnamese that moved at least once during wartime. Results show a robust and significant positive association between province-wide bombing intensity and later-life PTSD scores. Interaction effects indicate civilians have overall lower levels of PTSD than those that were in the formal or informal military, but the association between bombing and PTSD is stronger among civilians. Much of the association is a function of exposure to violence and less is a function of exposure to malevolent conditions. Findings confirm earlier studies that have shown severe deleterious impacts of war trauma, and arial bombardments particularly, on long-term psychological health, while extending extant literature to civilian populations living in Vietnam during intense aerial bombing episodes.

War across the life course: examining the impact of exposure to conflict on a comprehensive inventory of health measures in an aging Vietnamese population.

BACKGROUND: The majority of evidence indicates that exposure to war and other traumatic events continue to have negative impacts on health across the life course. However, existing research on health effects of war exposure primarily concentrates on short-term impacts among veterans in high-income countries sent elsewhere to battle. Yet, most wars situate in lower- and middle-income countries, where many are now or will soon be entering old age. Consequently, the current burden of exposure to war has ignored an important global population. METHODS: The Vietnam Health and Aging Study (VHAS) is a longitudinal study designed to examine historical exposure to highly stressful events during the American War. Two modes of data collection, involving a sample of 2447 individuals aged 60+ years in northern Vietnam, took place between May and August 2018. Using this first wave of data, we generate indexed measures of war exposure and analyze their associations with a set of 12 health outcomes, accounting for confounding variables. RESULTS: Results indicate that greater exposure to three types of war exposure (death and injury, stressful living conditions, and fearing death and/or injury) in earlier life is associated with worse health in later-life across a large number of health outcomes, such as number of diagnosed health conditions, mental distress, somatic symptoms, physical functioning, post-traumatic stress symptoms and chronic pain. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support a life course theory of health and point to long-term effects of war on health that require detailed attention.

Heterogeneity in the long term health effects of warfare.

This paper estimates the long-term heterogeneous legacies of exposures to war in utero and during early childhood on height in adulthood. Using a novel dataset on the regional WWII destruction in Germany, combined with the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find that individuals who experienced warfare in utero and during childhood are an average of 2cm shorter as adults, suggesting that the negative scarring effect of WWII dominated the positive effect coming from a selection. Among war survivors, children from less privileged families who resided in highly destroyed regions, particularly girls, suffered the greatest health consequences of warfare. Our analyses also show that wartime children who lost their parents during the war years are an average of 1.3cm shorter as adults. However, the father's conscription during WWII had no long-term effect on adult height.

War during childhood: The long run effects of warfare on health.

This paper estimates the causal long-term consequences of an exposure to war in utero and during childhood on the risk of obesity and the probability of having a chronic health condition in adulthood. Using the plausibly exogenous city-by-cohort variation in the intensity of WWII destruction as a unique quasi-experiment, I find that individuals who were exposed to WWII destruction during the prenatal and early postnatal periods have higher BMIs and are more likely to be obese as adults. I also find an elevated incidence of chronic health conditions such as stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorder in adulthood among these wartime children.

Do legal school leaving rules still affect schooling and earnings?

This paper quantifies whether compulsory schooling laws are still effective in the 21st century and if so, to what extent the school compulsion continues to influence individuals' educational achievement and labor market earnings. Using American Community Survey, I find that compulsory schooling laws were effective for the white men and women born in the 1930s and 1940s in the U.S.; however, they no longer produce the same seasonality effects on the educational attainment of the white cohorts who completed their educational attainment in the 2000s. I also find that the school compulsion was not binding for the older African American cohorts; however, they were effective in keeping the younger African American men at school longer.

Intergenerational persistence of health: Do immigrants get healthier as they remain in the U.S. for more generations?

It is well known that a substantial part of income and education is passed on from parents to children, generating substantial persistence in socioeconomic status across generations. In this paper, we examine whether another form of human capital, health, is also largely transmitted from generation to generation. Using data from the NLSY, we first present new evidence on intergenerational transmission of health outcomes in the U.S., including weight, height, the body mass index (BMI), asthma and depression for both natives and immigrants. We show that between 50% and 70% of the mothers' health status persists in both native and immigrant children, and that, on average, immigrants experience higher persistence than natives in BMI. We also find that the longer immigrants remain in the U.S., the less intergenerational persistence there is and the more immigrants look like native children. Unfortunately, the more generations immigrant families remain in the U.S., the more children of immigrants resemble natives' higher BMI.