Servicemembers and living veterans of U.S. conflicts 1941-2021| Statista

Total number of United States military personnel in major conflicts from 1941 to 1991, and living veterans from these wars as of 2021

Characteristic	Total servicemembers	Living veterans*
World War II (1941-1945)	16,112,566	389,000
Korean War (1950-1953)	5,720,000	1,165,000
Vietnam War (1964-1975)	8,744,000	6,262,000
Gulf War (First Iraq War; 1990-1991)	2,225,000	1,680,000

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Release date

May 2021

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Region

United States

Survey time period

1941 to 2021

Supplementary notes

These statistics refer to the personnel who served in the U.S. military during wartime, and does not refer exclusively to those who were deployed to the respective theaters of war.

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As of 2021, there are approximately 9.5 million U.S. military veterans of major conflicts from 1941 to 1991 still living. The largest of these cohorts is from the Vietnam War, followed by the Gulf War and Korean War. The oldest living veterans today are those that served in the Second World War, which the United States was involved in from 1941 until 1945, with the last remaining U.S. veteran of the First World War having died in 2018.
The Department of Veteran Affairs is responsible for administering benefits, health care and other services to assist veterans in transitioning back into civilian life. In recent decades the focus of these services has turned towards areas in which veterans are particularly known to have poor life outcomes, such as above-average suicide rates, mental health conditions such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and homelessness.