Great Britain after World War I & II: Studying the post-war sex-ratio imbalance

Abstract: One significant demographic outcome of armed conflicts is the influence on the popu- lation sex ratio. The sex ratio in this study refer to number of men versus number of women. The 20th Century experienced a shift from armed conflicts with high num- bers of military casualties and few civilian losses, to an opposite relationship with lower numbers of military losses but instead large numbers of civilian causalities, with a more balanced mortality between the sexes. During World War I and partly during WorldWar II, increased mortality of young men left more women in the age ranges of the ca- sualties, creating excess cohorts of women. The reported sex ratios relating to the two world wars were extraordinary. Sex ratios allegedly declined in almost all combatant countries, but not in the non-combatant countries. The declines were significant and substantial, and have been incomparable to subsequent conflicts. The aim of this thesis is to study how mortality in the cohort of men who were most active in World War I andWorld War II contribute to the sex ratio imbalance at the population level. The stud- ied case will be England and Wales with the population effects from World War I andWorld War II. This is the first study that focuses deeply on this subject. Observations of the surviving soldier cohorts reveal an amplifying effect on the sex ratio imbalanceon the population level. The study here addresses another type of sex ratio; sex ratio in mortality. After a severely increased mortality sex ratio during the war years and a drop immediately after the wars, post-war development for both World War I and World War II, display a regained high mortality ratio between males and females.