Civilian casualty ratio
Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones.
Chinese Labour Corps
The Corps did not take part in combat. According to the records kept by the British and French recruiters, around 2,000 men of the Chinese Labour Corps died during World War I, most from the 1918 flu pandemic and some as a direct result of enemy action or of wounds received in the course of their duties. In all, an estimated ten thousand died in the war effort, victims of shelling, landmines, poor treatment or the worldwide flu epidemic. Some Chinese scholars, who contest these figures, say the number of deaths was as high as 20,000.