How Much Lifetime is Lost Due to Homicides: A Cross-National Comparison

Introduction

Homicide remains a leading cause of premature death worldwide, particularly among adolescents and young adults (O’Brien, 2023; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2023). While global homicide rates have declined over past decades, these trends have not been evenly distributed across the world, and regions—particularly the Americas—continue to experience persistently high levels of lethal violence (Lappi-Seppälä & Lehti, 2014; Santos et al., 2019; UNODC, 2023). Unlike non-fatal forms of violence, homicide is particularly severe as it results in an irreversible loss of life. Moreover, because homicide disproportionately affects younger individuals (Santos, 2024; but see Steffensmeier et al., 2025), it can result in the loss of decades of potential life, thereby reducing life expectancy at the population level (O’Brien, 2023; Zimmerman et al., 2024). These effects may be especially pronounced in countries and regions where rising life expectancy coexists with high rates of youth homicide, as early deaths can offset broader public health gains that have contributed to a nearly 60% increase in global average life expectancy since the 1960s (United Nations Population Division, n.d).

Quantifying lifetime lost to homicide offers a compelling measure of the societal harm caused by violent crime, highlighting the broader implications of youth mortality for societal well-being. Moreover, this measure enables direct comparison with other drivers of youth mortality that have commanded public attention and investment in recent decades, which have consequently lessened alcohol use, tobacco use and motor vehicle accidents (Aragón et al., 2008; Cunningham et al., 2018). In most high-income countries, firearm-related mortality to suicide and homicide has also decreased steadily, including among younger age groups (Cunningham et al., 2018). In the United States (U.S.), however, firearm-related mortality among children and adolescents under age 19 has increased substantially and since 2019 surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death for this demographic group (Goldstick et al., 2021, 2022).

The United States, in particular, is notable for its high levels of income, elevated homicide rates, and relatively low life expectancy compared to peer nations. In 2020, the U.S. recorded a homicide rate of 7.25 per 100,000 population (pcm) and a life expectancy at birth of 77.01 years. All other major Anglophone countries globally had lower homicide rates and higher life expectancies, including Canada (1.47 pcm; 81.65 years), Australia (0.95 pcm; 83.66 years), and the United Kingdom (0.31 pcm; 80.89 years). These differences have been attributable to multiple causes, such as healthcare access, nutrition quality, obesity, substance abuse, suicides, and a disproportionate killing of young men (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2013). Moreover, until the downturn in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, life expectancy in the U.S. had remained stagnant since 2014, despite continued gains in other high-income countries around the world (Woolf & Schoomaker, 2019).

This study explores these dynamics by estimating trends in the lifetime that is lost to homicides in the U.S., and by situating that estimate within the context of other countries and regions around the world. Despite the relevance of the topic, few studies have conceptualized the impact of homicide on lifetime loss, and to our knowledge, none from a cross-national perspective. Using data from the US National Violent Death Reporting System, a study by Zimmerman et al. (2024) estimated that homicide victims in the U.S. lose an average of 41.52 years of their lives to homicide. That loss, however, is substantially greater among Hispanic (49.8 years), Asian (46.0), and African American (41.7) individuals, than among American Indian (36.3) and White individuals (37.6).

Sharkey and Friedson (2019) examined the impact of the post-1991 homicide decline on life expectancy across different demographic groups in the U.S. Their findings indicate that the decrease in homicides between 1991 and 2014 contributed to an increase in life expectancy, particularly for Black males. A study by Jiang et al. (2016) analyzed mortality data from Rhode Island, finding that residents in the state lost a total of 861 years to homicide per year between 2006 and 2013. As expected, that burden was concentrated among younger adults ages 15 to 24, who combined lost 373 years. For reference, Rhode Island’s population in the period averaged approximately 1.06 million persons, implying an average loss of 0.297 days per person, per year. In comparison, a study in Fars province, southern Iran, found an average loss of 0.303 days per person across 16 years (from 2004 to 2019), equivalent to just 0.0189 days per year (Azarbakhsh et al., 2023).

Differences in lifetime lost deserve close research attention. Because homicide disproportionately affects younger individuals (Farrington, 1986; Sweeten et al., 2013), its impact extends beyond the immediate death, amounting to decades of potential life removed. Studies confirm that homicide rates are consistently highest for those in their teens and twenties, and disparities in years of life lost can be substantial across social groups (Goldstick et al., 2021; Zimmerman et al., 2024). Yet prior research has focused on specific populations (e.g., Arnold et al., 2002; Redelings et al., 2010; Veisani et al., 2022) and few have provided comparative estimates that situate these losses in global perspective. This study extends this literature by showing how the harm of homicide varies across countries and regions, and by underscoring the disproportionate effect of youth killings in places such as the United States and the Americas.

Data & Methods

Study data are country and year-level measures published by international organizations within the United Nations (UN) system. Supplemental Files include the data and code required to replicate the analyses.

Results

Figure 1 illustrates the full trends in Days Lost for each region between 2000 and 2021 (see Table S2 for the corresponding values). The average person in the world lost 1.28 days of their lives to homicides in 2021. The Americas was, by far, the region with the greatest average loss, at 2.29 days, followed by Europe (1.19 days), Asia (0.27 days), and Oceania (0.14 days).

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Figure 1.

Global trends in days lost—2000 to 2021.

Most regions experienced a gradual decline in Days Lost to homicide between 2000 and 2021, resulting in a 27.1% drop for the world. Asia observed the steepest decline, at 56.3%, followed by Europe at 48%, and finally by Oceania at 43.8%. In the Americas, however, that decline was much more modest, at just 5.1%. Consequently, while in 2000, the number of Days Lost in the Americas was already 36.9% greater than that of the overall world, in 2021, that ratio increased to 78.2%, making the Americas even more distinguishable.

Panel A of Figure 2 shows a comparison of the trend in Days Lost in the United States relative to the world’s average. In 2021, U.S. residents lost an average of 1.25 days to homicide, which is nearly the same as the average loss for the world. That similarity is partially a consequence of a convergence since the COVID-19 pandemic, when homicides in the U.S. increased while the global homicide rate was still declining (Lopez & Rosenfeld, 2021; Nivette et al., 2021). There is, however, evidence that the homicide rate in the U.S. is declining below its pre-pandemic levels (Lopez & Boxerman, 2025). Nonetheless, until 2021 the U.S. had experienced a 23.3% increase in the number of Days Lost relative to 2000, which contrasts with the decline observed across all regions during the same period.

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Figure 2.

Trends in days lost in the United States—1990 to 2021.

In Panel B, we compare U.S. trends in Days Lost with the homicide rate. Both variables were standardized relative to the values of all other countries in the data. Specifically, while the 2021 homicide rate in the U.S. is just 0.05 standard deviations (SDs) above average, the number of Days Lost is 0.15 SDs above its average, which is reflective of a larger proportion of younger victims. Furthermore, the discrepancy between the two series was greater in 1990 (at 0.17 SDs) than in 2021 (at 0.12 SDs), partially because of a disproportionate decline in juvenile homicide victimization.

We explore the average number of Days Lost per age group in Figure 3, illustrating the contribution of each age to the overall estimates for each region (in Panel A), and for the U.S. (in Panel B). Values correspond to averages between 2010 and 2021. Here, the Americas stand out as the region where youth ages 20 to 24 lose a disproportionate amount of time to homicide, at a per capita average of 7.13 days per year, though that number declines steeply for older age groups. In fact, youth ages 15 to 34 in the Americas are the only age group that loses over 4 days to homicide. In all other regions, the distribution of Days Lost is more balanced across ages and has a later peak, whereas in Europe, the greatest loss is for individuals ages 30 to 34 (at 2.53 days). The U.S. mirrors the distribution of the Americas, with a peak at ages 20 to 24, though at a more modest loss for that age group of 2.89 days. Generally, the estimates by age demonstrate that much of the extraordinary loss in the Americas is driven by a disproportionate killing of youth.

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Figure 3.

Average number of days lost per age group.

Summing age-specific Days Lost in each location enables an estimate of the expected loss to homicides over the entire lifetime. Here, an underlying assumption is that the average number of Days Lost since 2010 would remain relatively stable over each age cohort’s life, which is a simplification. With that acknowledgment, a person in the world would lose 23.28 days, on average. Considering that the average global life expectancy between 2010 and 2021 was 71.3 years, an average person loses 0.089% of their life to homicide. An average person in the Americas would lose a total of 34.2 days, 24.84 days in Europe, 6.34 in Asia, and 2.69 in Oceania. More specifically, in the U.S. an average person would lose 14.73 days to homicide over their lifetime, which corresponds to 0.058% of their life expectancy.

Finally, in Figure 4, we illustrate the estimates of individual countries using a scatterplot of the number of Days Lost (y-axis), relative to the homicide rate (x-axis). The fit line in the graph reflects the number of Days Lost predicted for each value of the homicide rate by a simple ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model. As shown, all countries with larger, positive discrepancies in Days Lost relative to their homicide rate are in the Americas, including El Salvador (code SV), Venezuela (VE), Colombia (CO), Brazil (BR), and the United States (US). Conversely, most countries with the largest negative discrepancies are former members of the Soviet Union, including Russia (RU), Ukraine (UA), Latvia (LV), and Turkmenistan (TM).

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Figure 4.

Scatterplot of the average number of days lost (y-axis) by the homicide rate (x-axis).

Discussion

Among forms of violence, homicide is especially consequential because it eliminates years a person would otherwise live. Particularly when concentrated among youth, homicides can result in a substantial loss of lifetime and effectively reduce population-level life expectancy. This study contributes to the study of the consequences of homicide by quantifying its societal burden through the amount of lifetime lost due to homicide at the population level.

We estimate that, in 2021, homicides accounted for an average loss of 1.28 days of life per person globally. In the United States, this figure was only slightly lower, at 1.25 days per person. Assuming age-specific mortality rates from homicide remain constant, the average person worldwide would lose approximately 23.28 days over their lifetime due to homicide—equivalent to 1 day lost for every 996 days lived.

Importantly, these time losses are concentrated among homicide victims, for whom victimization can mean the loss of decades of potential life. By restricting our per capita measure (originally based on the total population) to homicide victims only, we estimate that the average victim in 2021 lost 13,447 days (approximately 36.8 years) to homicide. This represents a 5.33% increase from 12,767 Days Lost in 2000 (see Table S3 and Figure S4 for regional estimates and trends). In the U.S., that loss was even greater, at 16,276 days (44.56 years). In 2021 there were nearly 8 billion people worldwide, approximately 458,000 of whom were homicide victims (UNODC, 2023), who combined lost a total of 27,855,768 years of their lives to homicide just in that year. The United States alone lost a total of 1,160,752 years.

Our lifetime estimates also support considerations of value. Studies have estimated the value of a statistical life (VSL), which often results in wide estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to many millions of dollars (Viscusi & Masterman, 2017). The VSL does not ascribe an intrinsic value to life, but is instead meant as a statistical tool to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of health policies, guiding the allocation of scarce public resources to the most urgent and impactful interventions.

In the absence of a more precise estimate, the WHO has recommended the value of 1 to 3 times the GDP per capita as guidance for determining the value of a statistical life year (VSLY; WHO, 2001). We apply the mid-point of that guidance (2) on World Bank’s estimates for countries’ GDP, measured in current U.S. dollars (US$). The result is a worldwide value lost to homicides of 803.905 billion US$, or 101.47 US$ per capita, for a single year of killings in 2021. In the United States that loss was 346.93 US$ per capita, for a total loss of 117.864 billion US$.

The main purpose of the VSLY is to support cost-effective policy decisions. For reference, in 2019 state and local governments in the U.S. spent a total of 254.980 billion US$ on criminal justice, including policing, judicial and corrections costs (BJS, n.d). Adjusted by the accumulated national inflation (6.27%), that amount would correspond to 270.980 billion US$ in 2021 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d.). Based on our estimates, 43.5% of those expenditures could be justified by the statistical value of the lifetime lost to homicides. Future research, however, should produce a more comprehensive estimate, which would consider other costs and investments related to homicide. Nonetheless, our value estimate indicates that, relative to thresholds used to justify public health investments more broadly, a disproportionately low amount of dollars is being dedicated to reducing homicides.

Another important finding from this study is that, considered from a lifetime perspective, the loss attributable to homicide becomes even more concentrated in the Americas than in other global regions. First, the Americas have the highest homicide rate in the world, at 15 per 100,000 population, compared to a global rate of 5.8 (UNODC, 2023). Second, from 1990 to 2020, the homicide rate in the Americas has remained relatively stable, while other regions experienced a steep decline in homicides (Santos & Testa, 2018; Weiss et al., 2016). Third, a disproportionate number of homicides in the Americas are concentrated among youth who, for their age, would expectedly live much longer if not for their killing. Largely because of these early killings, an average person in the Americas loses over a month (34 days) to homicide over their life-course. To a milder degree, the United States observes a similar issue as the overall region, with a large concentration of Days Lost between ages 15 and 29 (at 7.17 days), which represents nearly half of the total lifetime loss in the country, at 14.73 days.

Those youth homicides can be a product of many criminogenic forces concentrated in the Americas, including gangs, demographic composition, marginalization, ineffective governance, etc. (Concha-Eastman et al., 2021). Our estimates demonstrate a key harm caused by these youth homicides, as they correspond to an enormous loss of lifetime. From a public health perspective, homicides are a preventable cause of early mortality, and one that disproportionally impacts disadvantaged groups (Sharkey & Friedson, 2019). By reducing homicide, these groups could benefit greatly in terms of expanding their life expectancy, and overall well-being.

Importantly, the lifetime loss to homicides in the Americas was below the world’s average for ages 50 and older. That comparison suggests that homicides among older adults in the Americas are not as prevalent, possibly because of structural factors of the region. However, a key reason why Days Lost are not as pronounced among older adults in the Americas could be because many high-risk individuals have already been murdered at a young age. Specifically, studies have shown that offending increases the risk of homicide victimization (Dobrin, 2001), and that homicide victims and offenders tend to share similar characteristics (Broidy et al., 2006; Jennings et al., 2012). Thus, the outset of criminal trajectories can be caused by a premature death, instead of reflecting a process desistance, contributing to a lower homicide mortality of older age groups (Lu et al., 2024; O’Brien & Stockard, 2009). Hence, because of cohort survival effects the Days Lost among older adults could be greater if youth killings were not as prevalent. Alternatively, the Americas could have cultural and structural features that reduce interpersonal offending at older ages. This is a key topic for future research.

Future research should also investigate the interventions able to effectively reduce lifetime loss. Our own assessment indicates that our measure of Days Lost has many of the same longitudinal predictors as the traditional measure of homicide rate (see Supplemental Tables S3 and S4 for fixed effects Poisson models, descriptive statistics and associated text descriptions). Thus, causal and predictive research should continue to focus on the homicide rate as a simpler and more broadly used measure of interpersonal violence, as reducing that violence more generally would also, naturally, reduce lifetime loss.

Supplemental Material