The Demography of Structural Violence

Abstract

The distribution of a society's resources affects not only the standard of living, but the chances of survival itself. A more equal distribution will normally increase the average length of life in society as a whole. The loss of life from an unequal distribution is an as pect of structural violence: violence inherent in the social order. We here develop measures of structural violence based on the potential increase in life expectancy, and show how they are related to the annual number of deaths and total death rates. One main result is the equality between the percentage loss of life years, and the percentage of deaths due to struc tural violence, when the population is in stationary equilibrium. A cohort approach is used to investigate structural violence over time. Methods for dealing with empirical, non-stationary populations are also developed. The amount of structural vio lence in the global society is calculated as an example, and compared with Köhler and Al cock's work. We find, for 1970, a potential life expectancy of 72 years, while the actual value was 53 years. The index of structural violence (ISV), which measures the intensity, is .26; and the quantity of structural violence (QSV), which corresponds to the number of dead, equals 18 million annual deaths from structural violence.