A new international study led by the Centre’s Dr José Manuel Aburto finds that life expectancy for young people can be as much as 14 years shorter in violent countries compared to peaceful countries.
In this video, lead authors’ José and Vanessa di Lego from the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, discuss their findings and how global violence is a public health crisis with tremendous implications on population health.
According to the research, violent deaths are responsible for a high proportion of the differences in lifetime uncertainty between violent and peaceful countries.
José adds, ‘What we found most striking is that lifetime uncertainty has a greater association with violence than life expectancy. Lifetime uncertainty, therefore, should not be overlooked when analysing changes in mortality patterns.’
The study concludes, Violence increases uncertainty in when we will die. This central finding of our study shows that the impact of violence on mortality goes beyond cutting lives short. When lives are routinely lost to violence, those left behind face uncertainty as to who will be next.
The Centre’s Professor Ridhi Kashyap also worked on the study alongside researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and London School of Economics.
Read the full paper here and news story here.
You can also watch the explainer video here.
About the lead author
Dr José Manuel Aburto is a Fellow at the Centre and Brass Blacker Associate Professor of Demography at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is also Assistant Professor of the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics and a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
