Measuring the Expectation for Life and the Spread of Violence in Latin America

Piedad Urdinola, University of California, Berkeley
Bernardo L. Queiroz, University of California, Berkeley

This study measures the impact of violent deaths, as measured by loss/gain of years of life expectancy, in seven Latin American countries. Besides, it provides an argument and empirical evidence for an epidemiological approach to this spread of violence in the region. For that purpose a backward projection will be made for violent causes of death, as if they followed a contagion disease model. The data used for this project includes both census records and deaths by age, cause and sex. The registration problems in the data is corrected following the most recent methods developed by Hill (2000).