who dies for us?

Lasso, the political blogger for the Austin American Statesman, has been looking at, for a past month, which Americans are dying in Iraq. He and a statistician have been comparing where these soldiers come from, urban or rural counties.

According to Lasso:

Counties with fewer than 50,000 residents have death rates twice that of counties of a million or more.

This is new. In earlier times, the best we can tell, every part of America has contributed equal numbers of young men and women to the military. Not now, it seems.

Lasso surmises that the economic differences between suburban and rural folk accounts for much of this, as the poorer rural people are using the military as an opportunity to better themselves through its training and educational opportunities.