Examining the eighth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/
This lecture is focused on estimating deaths in a conflict, which is a subject that has produced some unusually high figures through faulty analysis. For example, he starts with a figure of 6.9 million killed in the Congo (slide 2). This leads Dr. Spagat into a discussion of “excess death rate,” which is basically estimating how many additional deaths occur if there is a war going on vice if there is peace (starting slide 4). From slide 4-12 he questions the Congo estimate. He does not offer an alternative figure, but it is clear that the real figure might be considerably lower, in particular as the IRC (International Refugee Committee) used an estimated baseline rate of deaths figure that was probably too low for Congo.
On slide 13 he starts discussing Iraq, where he has done such an estimate (provided on slide 14). His figure is 160,000 excess deaths for Iraq in 2003-2011, which is a lot lower than some of other estimates out there (I think I have seen them as high as 600,000). He then discusses the problems with his estimate (slide 15). From slides 16-30 he discusses further aspects of estimating excess deaths, including looking at regional variation and the impact of war on health (child height)Â . This may be getting a little bit to much into the weeds for most of our readers.
Anyhow, the main takeaway from all this is to be wary of over-estimates of total losses in wars. Sometimes they can be way too high.
The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%208.pdf
Sir,
thanks for your informative comments on Michael Spagat’s lectures (and your other posts!). A minor clarification though: The figures M. Spagat refers to come from IRC/ Int’l Refugee Committee, not the Int’l Red Cross.
Best,
g.
Thanks. It has been corrected. I gather my postings have inspired Michael Spagat to start posting the rest of his lectures on line (there are 20 of them).