Lost generations: The demographic impact of the Great War

Abstract

At the end of the Great War, the cohort of men born in 1894 was aged 25. Half of the men in this cohort had already been struck down by two major killers: infant and childhood diseases, followed by war. Their life expectancy,already low in peacetime (48 years) was shortened by 11 years. War losses among other cohorts depended on age at mobilization and duration of exposure. The conflict left half a million young war widows (aged below 45) and a million fatherless children. More than a million children were never born, and in 1939 France became the world's oldest country, before the baby-boom turned the situation around.