1. ESTIMATING U.S. HUMAN CAPITAL LOSS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: A COMMENT.
- Author
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Ziderman, Adrian
- Subjects
HUMAN capital ,CAPITAL losses ,VIETNAM War, 1961-1975 - Abstract
This article presents a review of data in literature about measurement of U.S. human capital loss in Southeast Asia. Philip Eden measures the human capital losses to U.S. society resulting from casualties in the Vietnam war by defining societal loss in terms of the present values of forgone life-time earnings of fatalities and the totally disabled in the war. A very similar approach is adopted in a simultaneous paper by B. F. Kiker and Jon Birkeli. Eden offers his paper as a case study in human capital evaluation specifically designed as a means of stimulating discussion of these problems. Eden justifies the inclusion of the personal consumption of casualties on the grounds that he is trying to measure the economic consequence of a political policy to our society as a whole. But this only begs the question, since the central issue is how society should be defined for the purpose at hand. Kiker and Birkeli are clearer on this matter: Since we define society to include the group whose value is being determined, we can capitalize expected gross earnings foregone to estimate human capital loss. J. M. Clark posed the question at issue very clearly: has the nation, since the war--and this means ultimately the individuals who have composed it since the War--been richer or poorer by the loss of life and health due to the War, and how much? This would appear to be the problem with which the papers by Eden and by Kiker and Birkeli are concerned, but for which the estimation models used seem inappropriate.
- Published
- 1973
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