Scarring and mortality selection among Civil War POWS

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Debilitating events could leave either frailer or more robust survivors, depending on the extent of scarring and mortality selection. The majority of empirical analyses find frailer survivors. I find heterogeneous effects. Among severely stressed former Union Army POWs, which effect dominates 35 years after the end of the Civil War depends on age at imprisonment. Among survivors to 1900, those younger than 30 at imprisonment faced higher older age mortality and morbidity and worse socioeconomic outcomes than non-POW and other POW controls whereas those older than 30 at imprisonment faced a lower older age death risk than the controls"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.