UC Sociologist Predicts Iraq War Toll on Children

Before the war in Iraq began, University of Cincinnati sociologist Steven L. Carlton-Ford “guesstimated” in a conservative scenario that 22,000-44,000 children under 5 would die as a direct and indirect consequence of the conflict, within the next year.

Judging from the indicators he has seen so far from the recent war in Iraq, Carlton-Ford thinks his initial estimates may be on target. He expects Iraqi children’s mortality to rise significantly this year compared to the previous year.

Carlton-Ford, professor of sociology in UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences,  has spent years analyzing wars that occurred around the world, assessing their impact on the mortality rate for children under 5. On Aug. 18, he will present a poster session on his war research and a dataset he is making available to other researchers during at the annual American Sociological Association meeting in Atlanta.

His study on conflicts occurring from 1946 to 1995 has found that children’s death rate jumps at least 35 percent as a result of war and its aftermath, when a country that has been at peace experiences war on its home soil.

Carlton-Ford says the information available from Iraq at this time is fragmentary. “But let me give you a sense, in so far as I can find out, of what is happening. Malnutrition rates are roughly double of those a year ago (UNICEF), roughly 70 percent of children recently seen by a Canadian medical team were suffering from diarrhea, cholera or typhoid. The context of what I have read indicates that this figure is representative. Food, safe water and electricity have yet to be restored to pre-war levels. The amount of raw sewage being dumped into water supplies has roughly doubled (from 500,000 tons per day to 1 million tons per day).

“In short,” says Carlton-Ford, “all of the reports coming out of Iraq suggest that in all probability child mortality rates will be significantly higher than a year ago. Not all of the problems are a direct result of U.S. bombing, but clearly U.S. intervention has destabilized the country and any rebuilding from the war or the earlier sanctions will be slow.”

The professor of sociology in the UC McMicken College of Arts and Sciences emphasizes that while combat may not result in many direct casualties among 1- to 5-year-olds, war’s after-effects, in the form of damaged water distribution and sanitation systems and other problems, does result in additional deaths of children. According to his research, if war were to take place in the United States, there would be an additional three to four deaths per 1,000 children under the age of 5. That would mean an additional 60,000 deaths in the United States among children under 5 per year.

According to Carlton-Ford, the mortality rate of children in Iraq had been steadily improving for 30 years before the Persian Gulf War and had reached the range of 30-40 deaths per 1,000 children. In the years since 1991, however, the rate spiked back up, more than tripling. According to Carlton-Ford, it stabilized around 130 deaths per 1,000 during the 1990s and was most recently at 133 per 1,000.

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