The Demography of Conflict and Violence: Homicide Mortality on the Mexico - United States Border, 2000-2019

This dissertation broadly explores the effects of homicides on population-level measures by applying demographic methods to establish a contextual and theoretical-based relationship between violence and demography, thus contributing to the subfield of the demography of conflict and violence. In Chapter I, generalized violence was operationalized by creating an index of generalized violence. A principal component analysis was carried out on an array of objective, subjective, and structural variables to elucidate a generalized violence dimension across municipalities along the US-Mexico border. I found that Border municipalities have concentrated most of the generalized violence from 2011 to 2019. In Chapter II, life expectancy estimates are used to examine homicide mortality conditions in the US-Mexico Border states and municipalities from 2000 to 2019. A measure of structural violence is proposed as the difference between potential and observed life expectancy for the Border states and municipalities. This measure of structural violence has been a constant in the Border region since 2006. In Chapter III, I investigate the contribution of different types of aggression to changes in life expectancy from 2000 to 2019. Changes in life expectancy were decomposed by type of aggression following Horiuchi's continuous change model. This analysis shows firearm homicides accounted for about 78% to 88% of the overall violent death contribution to male life expectancy. Together, the chapters in this dissertation offer a mortality analysis of the consequences of conflict and violence through demographic lenses.