Two economists' new approach to Civil War data sheds fresh light on the social costs of heterogeneity
When the Union Army's 154th New York Volunteer Infantry disbanded, in 1865, its commanding colonel, Lewis D. Warner, gave a farewell speech that extolled the regiment's cohesion and solidarity. "I would not exchange my three years' connection with this little band," he said, "for all the rest of my life together."
The "connection with this little band" is an eternal theme of warfare. Now such intense, life-changing bonds — the stuff of epic poetry and sentimental TV documentaries — are being scrutinized by number-crunching social scientists. A new book by two economists at the University of California at Los Angeles uses elaborate statistical tools to analyze how social networks shaped things like desertion rates and the attainment of literacy among 40,000 soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
In Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton University Press), Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn report that military units were more cohesive if they were composed of men who looked, voted, and worshiped like one another. Diverse units, meanwhile, did not fare as well.
The book is likely to draw attention from a wide variety of scholars — historians, political scientists, sociologists — because it brings a new kind of evidence to a longstanding debate about diversity and social cohesion that goes far beyond the Civil War. Scholars of education finance, for example, sometimes talk about a "Florida effect": The typical property-tax payer in Florida is elderly and white, but the typical public-school student is Latino. In states where taxpayers are more similar to students, citizens tend to be more willing to invest public dollars in education. Ms. Costa and Mr. Kahn say that they do not support segregation of any kind — but that it is crucial to understand the costs associated with heterogeneity....
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The "connection with this little band" is an eternal theme of warfare. Now such intense, life-changing bonds — the stuff of epic poetry and sentimental TV documentaries — are being scrutinized by number-crunching social scientists. A new book by two economists at the University of California at Los Angeles uses elaborate statistical tools to analyze how social networks shaped things like desertion rates and the attainment of literacy among 40,000 soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
In Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton University Press), Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn report that military units were more cohesive if they were composed of men who looked, voted, and worshiped like one another. Diverse units, meanwhile, did not fare as well.
The book is likely to draw attention from a wide variety of scholars — historians, political scientists, sociologists — because it brings a new kind of evidence to a longstanding debate about diversity and social cohesion that goes far beyond the Civil War. Scholars of education finance, for example, sometimes talk about a "Florida effect": The typical property-tax payer in Florida is elderly and white, but the typical public-school student is Latino. In states where taxpayers are more similar to students, citizens tend to be more willing to invest public dollars in education. Ms. Costa and Mr. Kahn say that they do not support segregation of any kind — but that it is crucial to understand the costs associated with heterogeneity....