The effect of violence on young health

Fabiola Lpez Gonzlez (CIES)* 2 Guzmn Ricao Fernando (CIES)

1

Introduction In the last decade Mxico has faced an increase in violence due to the reinforcing of local organized crime groups which main activities are drugs and people trafficking. These activities have been scattering by all the national geography, from the rural communities to the most urbanized areas, it is important to consider that this dispersion encloses a violent component, because groups involved in these type of crime compete with each other in aim to control the paths of trafficking and the local markets. This situation has involved an increasing violent environment which has been permeating in all social spaces and it has affected the whole life of people of every age group. Particularly in Mexico, violence has an impact on its economic situation, social capital, but also on people health. If we consider that mortality is one of the most important indicators to diagnose the health situation of a population, undoubtedly youth has been the most affected, because this is the group with the larger proportion of deaths caused by violence. In addition to the effect on the surveillance, there is an impact to young people health. Unfortunately in this country there is no available information to measure it, in part because lack of information of health and criminal incidence (Ramrez Ducoing, 2012). Nevertheless, it is important for researchers and policymakers to know how large the impact of violence on health is; firstly because this population will lead the economic development of the country within about the next thirty years, what is important in a rapid ageing scenario. But also is important for demographic concerns in Mexico, because it is necessary to have idea of the amount of population that has been eliminated due to violence incidence. Consequently, it is important to develop methods in aim to measure the magnitude of violence affectations on youth health instead of data problems, in this paper it will be proposed a

Vice-Director of Research on Crime and Violence. Centre of Research and Studies on Security (Secretary of Public Security, Mexico. 2 Vice-Director of Analysis on Crime and Violence. Centre of Research and Studies on Security (Secretary of Public Security, Mexico.

methodology that let us approach indirectly in aim to compare through a standardized measure among populations. Data and methods The data we are going to use as a source of information about the impact on youth health are the statistics from de National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics of Mexico (INEGI). Specifically: 1) Death counts (only those occurred during 2010) 2) 2010 census data a. Age structure b. Information about disabled population

Only we will consider the young people, defined as those who are between 15 and 29 years old. The measure that we are going to use is similar to Disability Adjusted Lost Years (DALY).

The

basically correspond to the number of deaths multiplied by the standard life expectancy is the following for a given cause, age

at the age at which death occurs. The basic formula for and sex:

Where

can be seen as the number of deaths and

represents the standard life expectancy at

age of death in years. Because measure the incident stream of lost years of life due to deaths, an incidence .

perspective is also taken for the calculation of

Where is the number of incident cases;

represents the disability level weight and can be

seen as the average duration of the case until remission or death (years).

Expected results Because there is a level violence differential situation in all the Mexican states this measure will be useful to see understand how the violence level affects young population. In fact, the states with a higher violence level would have more DALY. To assess the level of violence we will use the results of the National Survey of Victimization and Perception of Security (ENVIPE). Additionally we would observe that this measure would have been larger in men than in women.