Stated in Dr. Joachim K. Winter’s new study, are the possible physical, psychiatric and social complications one should be aware of and it also brings some new clues on whether or not the conflict had the ability to change a nation’s public health profile.
Dr. Joachim K. Winter is co-author of the study and economist at the University of Munich. He insisted that his new study comes in response to the lack of research on the subject. Considering the catastrophes caused by the conflict, the hundreds of millions of casualties recorded during the Second World War and all the changes the nations involved went through and still the existing economic literature about the war’s long-time impact has been hugely out of interest.
Winter said that documentation of this type is extremely necessary for the people to better understand this long-term consequences of the Second World War. In this case, about 20,000 older people from 12 European countries, who lived through World War Two during its six-year period and when 2.5 percent of the world’s population died, were surveyed for the study, which was later published in the Review of Economics and Statistics.
The first results of the test included risk of diabetes, depression, heart problems, noticeable especially in families with a low income, the Medical Daily reports.
Dr. James P. Smith of the RAND Corporation, who wrote the study together with Dr. Joachim K. Winter said that the conflict did affect all social classes, however, it looks like there was a higher impact on middle class families, with the lower class coming just behind them, in terms of how powerful the impact was.
The study also reveals information regarding education, economics and marriage. The research showed that people who lived during the war, had a lower level of education and it took them longer to finish their studies, very few of them married and few of them were happy with their lives in old age.
“War has many noticeable consequences, but it also takes a toll on the health and well-being of survivors over the course of their lives,” insisted co-author Dr. Iris Kesternich. What the study is trying to underline is the fact that the consequences of an armed conflict will not only be noticeable during the first few years following the end of the conflict, but it continues during the lives of those who lived it.