The Evolution of Omission of Deaths Due to Accidents and Violence in Brazil: A Spatial Analysis of the Association between External Causes of Death and Ill-Defined Death Causes

Everton E. C. Lima, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Luciana C. Alves, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

This study aims to analyze the hypothesis of inverse relationship between ill-defined mortality and external causes of death in Brazil, from 1991 to 2010. We state that an increase in ill-defined causes of death is associated with a reduction on the number of deaths due to external causes in this period. This study make extensive use of spatial autoregressive models. The models indicate that for males, after controlling for relevant indicators – such as socioeconomic, health and geographic variables –, the increase of 1% in the number of ill-defined deaths in the mesoregions of Brazil reduces the percentage of external causes of death in 0.19% and 0.21% from 1991 to 2010. For females, this relation was also significant, however, with small magnitude. We may also speculate that there is an omission of violence and traffic-related deaths (corresponding two-third of the deaths in the chapter of external death causes) in Brazil.