Title:  ‘Upsurge of violence in Mexico and its impact on life expectancy and fertility desires’

Abstract

Since 2006, Mexico experienced an unprecedented surge in violence caused by a combination of national policies and international influences on drug trafficking organizations. In this seminar I will present ongoing work on the recent impacts of violence on two demographic dimensions: mortality and fertility desires. Using formal demographic methods we examine trends in life expectancy and lifespan inequality in Mexico in 2015-2021. Violence exposure can affect fertility desires too. We link data on monthly homicide rates across Mexican municipalities with data from the Mexican Family Life Survey for 14,301 women aged 15-45, collected in the years before and during the surge in violence (2002-2012). Using fixed-effects models, we investigate how changes in violence exposure at municipal level relate to changes in women’s fertility preferences, as measured by the total desired number of children accounting for current parity. We test for differences by women’s educational attainment. Results show that fertility desires of Mexican women remained unchanged in the wake of increased homicides during the Drug War. This suggests that any changes in fertility trends during the period may be attributed to postponement, anticipation, and potentially the failure to achieve desired family size.