America's Vietnam Casualties: Victims of a Class War?

Analysis of data about the 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam implies that affluent U.S. communities had only marginally lower casualty rates than the nation as a whole. Poor communities had only marginally higher rates. Data about the residential addresses of war casualties suggest that, within both large heterogeneous cities and wealthy suburbs, there was little relationship between neighborhood incomes and per capita Vietnam death rates. Such outcomes call into question a widespread belief that continues to influence U.S. policy discussions, namely, that American war deaths in Vietnam were overwhelmingly concentrated among the poor and working class.