I overheard a coworker of mine talking, and his son just signed up for the Army. His son told him that a civilian in the US actually has greater odds of dying than a soldier in Iraq, based on how many soldiers are over there vs. how many have been killed.
Is this actually true? It sounds like a lie from a recruiter to me.
It might be true if you compare soldiers to all civilians in the U.S. disregadrding age and health. But there are very few (none?) soldiers in Iraq dying of old age, cancer, etc.
I’d agree. The ratio of U.S. citizens to daily U.S. deaths may be worse that U.S. troops in Iraq to daily death rate of U.S. troops in Iraq.
However, if you only counted U.S. deaths that were results of accidents and murders Iraq would be a worse off place.
Another way to think of it is like this – you have roughly 140,000 soldiers in Iraq. They are, for the most part, young and healthy. We’ll lose about 660 of them a year, at current rates, due to enemy action. Now, if those 140,000 soldiers were home, would you lose 660 in a year? You would not. Check out this site for the odds of dying in a given year from any form of accident – car accident, murder, fall from a horse, etc. By my reckoning, of a population of 140,000, at most about 80 would die by accident in a year. Throw in a few more for mortality due to illness, and you’d still be a long way from 660.
My rough calculation:
Annual odds of dying in Iraq:
2000 deaths/150,000 troops (on average)/2.7 years = **0.5% **
Annual odds of dying in the U.S. from the CDC
840 deaths/100,000 people/1 year = **0.84% **
So you’re about 1.7 times more likely to die in the U.S. BUT that’s not adjusted for age. Let’s try to ballpark the effect of age. The average age of the troops in Iraq that I could find was 27 years.
The annual likelihood of dying in the U.S. if you’re 25-34 (from the CDC again)
102.2/100,000 people/1 year = ** 0.1% **
This isn’t a great way to adjust for age, but it’s the best I can do with the information I’ve got - and it suggests that for your age, you’re about 5 times more likely to die in Iraq than in the U.S.
According to Table no. 95 in Vital Statistics from Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2004-2005, the recent death rate in the U.S. is about 8.5 per 1,000.
Our own Airman Doors made a similar argument in his thread about Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, although his point of comparison was specifically auto accidents. He said, in post #89:
In reply, monstro pointed out, in post #99:
And Hentor the Barbarian added, in post #103:
And i entered the fray in post #107 with similar observations to monstro and Hentor:
As i suggested in that thread, this is not simply an either/or situation. For those serving in Iraq, you have to add the possibility that they will be killed by an act related to the occupation (enemy fire, friendly fire, insurgent suicide bomb, etc., etc.) to the regular, run-of-the-mill possibilities of death. Also, as others have suggested here, you have to compare the death rate in Iraq not to the overall US death rate, but to the death rate of those with similar demographic indicators as those serving in Iraq. Most of those in Iraq are relatively young, healthy folks who have, in most cases, been cleared by the military of any ailments and afflictions that would likely impede their abilities or cause them serious health concerns. If you look at the death rate among similarly young, healthy folks here in the US, i suggest that it’s probably rather lower than the death rate among US troops in Iraq.
Most fundamentally, you have to ask: Of all the people who have served in Iraq since the start of the war, how many would likely be dead if the war had never started? Would it likely be fewer than 2,000 people?
I showed that above already I think. It’s around five times lower.
Indeed you did.
And your figures, as i’m sure you realize, don’t even take account of the fact that members of the armed forces are probably, on the whole, fitter and healthier than the average for their age group.
The Army’s Combat Readiness Center claims that right now 1 soldier dies every 9 hours. If we subtract the combat deaths, that’s still a shit load of young healthy people dying back home. Most of those are caused by driving POVs, drinking, or just “blowing off steam” - which I think includes sports and extreme sports fatalities.
Not really making a point. Just thought someone could use the 1 every 9 hours for an anual statistic and maybe subtract the soldier deaths in Iraq (remember just Army) and see what we come up with for a % chance of a soldier dying in Iraq vs dying in the US. I think it would be the most accurate comparisson.
Oh… and training. Don’t know how I forgot to mention training. Many of those fatalities are from soldiers dying while training.
So I think whatever number we’d come up with doing the math above, it wont be accurate to compare to civilians. But it will say how, if you’re in the Army already, how much your chance of death is actually increased by going to Iraq.
Maybe. But they’re also on the whole from lower socioeconomic groups too, I think. Which I’d expect would have an impact in the other direction. Overall I’m happier with just ballparking by age and acknowledging that that only gives you a rough idea, but nevertheless clearly shows a far higher likelihood of death in Iraq, on the order of at least several times the likehood of death in the U.S.
Bear_Nenno - can you provide a cite for your data point? I’m not sure exactly what 1 death every 9 hours is referring to.
Oh, and another issue, mhendo, is that there are more men in Iraq and men ordinarily have something like twice the death rates in that age group as women (translation: men can’t take care of themselves 
). So that would also tend to cancel out any better health effect.
If we were to follow your coworker’s (il)logic then we would send all of our old and sick citizens over to Iraq because, according to the stats, they would have less chance of dying. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
This is another example of using bogus, incomplete information to manipulate people’s attitudes and decisions.
This has the same problem that has been pointed out several times: the number of deaths per hour among a group of 150,000 people is way different from the number of deaths per hour among a group of 300,000,000 people.
Revtim, by the same argument, it’s safer to be a teenage drunk driver than to be an ordinary citizen. The same demographic non-comparability would apply.
So, we got a gummint representative misusing statistics? How astounding.
https://crc.army.mil/readiness/
Not sure if it will work without login and password, but I think it should.
Revtim: I’m curious if you have given these statistics to your co-worker. On one hand, I support fighting ingorance. On the other hand it you were to offer the information unbidden, you’d probably piss him off.