Statistics for People Who Do Like to Think

CBS News on Sunday aired a statistic about the ratio of soldiers wounded in action to soldiers killed in action. According to CBS, in World War II, the ratio was 3:1, while in Vietnam, the ratio was 4:1. In Iraq, that ratio is 6:1.

Presumably, two of the reasons that the ratio has gone up since 1945 are first, advancements in how we wage war, and second, advancements in medical technology both on the battlefield and off. A third reason may be the ability to move the injured relatively quickly from the battlefield to a fully functional trauma unit behind the front lines (think M*A*S*H, only with more and better technology), rather than to a facility with only limited capabilities.

These changes in both warfare and medicine got to me to thinking -- what is the relevant comparison when comparing casualties of war? In economics, when prices are compared across a long period of time, the comparisons are often made in "constant dollars" or by using a benchmark currency value (e.g., "in 1980 dollars"). Wouldn't it also be relevant to account for changes over time when talking about the effects of war?

The injured-to-killed ratio might give us some insight in that regard, since comparisons of the number of KIAs in various conflicts is, of course, only part of the picture.

For example, based on the statistics cited by CBS, we could assume that if we had fought the Vietnam War using todays tactics and technology, the ratio of injured to killed would have been 6:1 instead of 4:1. In other words, we could calculate that 1 out of 3 soldiers who died in Vietnam then might have survived today. Thus, instead of 55,000 dead, the number might have been closer to 36,000 dead.

Conversely, one would need to multiply the number of killed in action in Iraq by 1.5 (6 divided by 4), which would bring us to approximately 840 combat deaths, in constant numbers.

Either way, the number of deaths in Iraq remains a fraction of the number of deaths in Vietnam and therefore, the impact of the adjustment might be negligible, but the point remains. If we're going to compare the cost of war across a span of 40 or 60 (or more) years, some sort of adjustment, whether it's revising current figures upward or past figures downward, it might be helpful to make the comparisons more accurate.