Survival Expectancy of French Soldiers during the Great War: A Microeconometric Analysis

The Survival Expectancy of French Soldiers during the Great War: A Microeconometric Analysis. This study attempts to explain the inter-individual differences in the survival expectancy of French soldiers during WW1. A sample of 23,000 servicemen was selected from the 'Morts pour la France' database of the French Ministry of Defense. For each soldier, we calculated the average number of days that had elapsed from August 2, 1914, the first day of the French general mobilization, to the occurrence of death. These survival times were analyzed using both standard and multilevel regression models. Our results indicate that, beyond the effects of age, rank and corps, the inter-individual differences in the mean survival time are influenced by contextual factors associated with the place of recruitment and the regiment.