Secular Trends of Global Burden of Violence, 1990–2015: In Spite of Successes, Women and Children Are Highly Affected in Low- and the Middle-Income Countries

Violence is a challenging modern epidemic worldwide. Less evidence is available on the populations most affected by violence in recent decades. The aim of the study was to ecologically investigate temporal trends of the global burden of violence according to gender, age group, and socio-demographic development.

Data on the age- and gender-specific rates of country-level disability adjusted life years (DALYs) attributable to different types of violence i.e. interpersonal violence (IV), and collective violence (CV) and legal interventions were retrieved from online database provided by the global burden of diseases project. Countries were categorized according to their socio-demographic index (SDI). Incidence rate ratio (IRR) per one year was estimated according to age groups, genders and SDI categories applying Poisson regression modeling.

The highest decrease of the DALYs attributable to IV was observed for the under-five-years age group and then for 5–14-years in both genders, globally. Considering the CV, estimated IRRs were significant only for the under-five-years age group, which was at 1.30 (95% CI: 1.20, 1.40, per 10 years) for girls and 1.29 (95% CI: 1.21, 1.39, per 10 years) for boys.

The rate of DALYs due to IV has been more decreasing among women and children during the recent decades. By the next 10 years, the attributed DALYs to CV would increase up to 120%. Children, adolescents and women are highly affected by CV in countries with middle-low and middle social development in the recent decades.