The Stagnation of the Mexican Life Expectancy in the First Decade of the Twenty First Century: The Impact of Violent Deaths.

In the first decade of the twenty first century the Mexican life expectancy changed from a long trend of increase to stagnation. These changes concur with an increase in deaths by homicides that the country experienced in that decade. There are 138,461 official reported deaths by homicide in the period of 2000 to 2010. However, the time trend shows an increase in the counts of homicides in the later years from an annual number of 10,000 to 25,000 deaths in 2010. We quantify the impact of these changes in homicides and other causes of death in life expectancy. Male life expectancy remained around the value of 72 years from 2000 to 2010. However, the apparent stagnation in life expectancy is resultant of increase in homicides and diabetes deaths on one hand, and the positive improvements observed in other causes of death on the other. The negative impact of homicides is particularly observed at ages 15 and 50, and diabetes for ages 45 and more, and they account for almost an entire year of the male life expectancy. Mexican males would have observed a 2 years increase in life expectancy if homicides and diabetes deaths had been avoided.