The impact of violence and COVID-19 on Mexico’s life-expectancy losses and recent bounce-back, 2015–22

Abstract

Background

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy in Mexico stagnated from the early 2000s, mainly due to increased homicides. During the pandemic, Mexico experienced sizable excess mortality. We aimed to assess the contribution of violence, COVID-19, and causes of death that were amenable to healthcare to life-expectancy changes between 2015 and 2022 in Mexico.

Methods

We used administrative mortality and adjusted population estimates to construct life tables. We applied demographic methods to untangle contributions of causes of death to life-expectancy changes by year and sex at the subnational level.

Results

Between 2015 and 2019, life expectancy declined from 71.8 to 71.1 years for males and stagnated at 77.6 years for females. Violence among young males explains most of the decline (54.3%). Between 2019 and 2020, life expectancy decreased by 7.1 and 4.4 years for males and females, respectively. COVID-19 accounted for 55.4% of that change for males and 57.7% for females. In 2021, male life expectancy stagnated but continued to decline for females by 0.44 years due to COVID-19 deaths. In 2022, we observed unequal recovery patterns in life expectancy across regions, as northern states experienced larger improvements than central and southern states.

Conclusion

We documented large variations in life-expectancy losses across Mexican states before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, violence accounted for most of the male life-expectancy losses. During the pandemic, following COVID-19 deaths, mortality due to diabetes and causes that were amenable to healthcare contributed considerably to observed losses, with an uneven impact on the sexes.