The Rural War

Robert Cushing is a retired University of Texas sociologist. Bill Bishop, a reporter for The Austin (Tex.) American-Statesman, is writing a book on political segregation, The New York Times, July 20, 2005.

WHICH American communities pay the highest price for the war in Iraq? A look at the demographics of soldiers killed reveals that Iraq is not the war of any one race or region. Rather, it is rural America's war.
Altogether, a nearly equal percentage of Americans aged 18 to 54 live in counties with a million or more inhabitants as live in counties of 100,000 or fewer. And yet, of the soldiers who have died in Iraq, 342 came from densely populated counties while 536 came from smaller ones. Derived from Pentagon and census data, this chart shows the Iraqi war death rates for every 100,000 people ages 18 to 54 by the size of their county's population.
The difference is visible not just in the size of a soldier's county of origin, but also in its location. Counties disconnected from urban areas tend to have higher death rates, regardless of population size. Small rural counties have a death rate nearly twice that of counties that have the same population but happen to be part of metropolitan areas.