Atlas of violence: black men die earlier than other elderly people in Brazil

The numbers from the 2023 Violence Atlas, released by the Brazilian Public Security Forum, this Tuesday (5), show that women die later than men in the country. This difference is even greater when race is considered. An elderly non-black woman died 10.9 years later than an elderly black man in 2021.

Race is the determining factor for 58.7% of the difference found, while sex accounts for the remaining 41.3%.

In 2019, this imbalance in mortality by sex and race was almost 13 years old. The reduction, in this latest edition, is due to the reduction in racial inequality in Brazil. The research, carried out by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), considers the black population as mixed race and black, as classified by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

In the population aged 60 or over, mortality from aggression is approximately 41% higher for black people than for non-black people, in 2021: 16.6 deaths from aggression per 100 thousand inhabitants, for black people, and 9.0, for not black.

Black men are the main homicide victims

Research shows that 77% of homicide victims in Brazil are black, which contributes to the mortality rate for black people being 10 times higher than that of non-black people, in 2021. The risk of a black person dying from murder is almost triple that of a non-black person dies for this cause.

Even after passing the age considered at risk, between 15 and 29 years old, black men have a homicide rate almost 10 times higher than non-black women. In 2021, 16.6 elderly black men per 100,000 inhabitants died from attacks, compared to less than two women, on the same staircase.

Between 2011 and 2021, the death rate from violent or external causes fell by around 40% for non-black elderly people and only 23.4% for black elderly people.

Between 2020 and 2021, the number of homicides of elderly non-black men was the only one to record a drop, of almost 9%. During this period, the rate among elderly black women grew by 18.9%.

Fall deaths increase during the pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, deaths due to falls among the elderly population increased in the country, but the growth was even greater among the black population. Among non-blacks, the rate was 17.0% and 18.3% for men and women, respectively.

In the age group of 60 years or more, deaths due to transport accidents were higher among black men (36.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants), compared to non-black men (30.3 per 100 thousand inhabitants), in 2021. Among women, the rate does not exceed 7 deaths on the same scale.

*Under the supervision of Bruno Laforé