Wall Street Journal study finds that rural youths who enlisted after 9/11 shouldered the greatest burden for the nation’s defense

Since 2001, volunteers from such places—many of them out-of-the-way counties struggling with lagging economies, drug addiction and limited options—have shouldered the greatest burden for America’s defense. They enlisted, fought and died in greater proportions than those from relatively more prosperous urban areas, an analysis of government military data by The Wall Street Journal found.

Using Pentagon data on the hometowns of 6,800 military casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2016, the Journal found that 23% came from small towns and rural areas, even though those places made up just 17% of the U.S. population. By contrast, 23% of those killed came from core counties of U.S. metropolitan areas of more than one million people, where 29% of Americans live.