Disability and its impact on life expectancy: heterogeneity across Mexican states

Abstract

Background: The percentage of the world's population with disabilities is estimated to be 16%, although its distribution and intensity varies within nations. We aim to disentangle the degree and types of disabilities, estimate the years spent with more severe disabilities, and analyze their distribution across states and between sexes in Mexico.

Methods: The Mexican Census of 2020 includes information on disabilities, which allows the study of its national distribution. We used life tables and the Sullivan method to calculate the number of years spent with disability (NYSD) and its percentage with respect to life expectancy for each state and each sex.

Results: In Mexico, the population with disabilities is estimated to be 16.5%. Of this total, 69% have milder disabilities, while the remaining 31% have more severe disabilities. At age eighteen, there is a higher NYSD from more severe disabilities for females with 5.67 years (95% CI 5.66 to 5.69) as opposed to males with 3.66 years (95% CI 3.65 to 3.67). Across states, a more homogeneous distribution with lower NYSD is observed for men (between 2.44 and 5.69 years) than for women (4.14 and 8.08 years). A north-south division can also be observed, with particularly notorious disadvantages among coastal states, which is more distinctive among women.

Conclusions: This study shows that comparing the number of years spent with disability and the total life expectancy between subpopulations is essential for monitoring the well-being of aging populations, guiding policy decisions, and promoting a society that values and supports all individuals, regardless of their abilities.

Keywords: Disabled people; Life expectancy; Mexico; Number of years spent with disability.

Fig. 1

Population pyramid for the Mexican general population and the population with disabilities (combining milder and more severe - black line) in 2020. Source: Mexican Census 2020 (INEGI, 2020a)

Fig. 2

Percentage of population with any disability (a), as well as with disabilities in vision (b), hearing (c) and movement (d), proportion of the population in parenthesis and subdivided by degree of disability (milder or more severe), for Mexican regions and states in 2020. Source: Mexican Census 2020 (INEGI, 2020a). Note: Ordered by “any disability” - panel (a), from the state with the highest more severe percentage to the lowest in each region

Fig. 3

Geographic distribution of the percentage of life years spent with more severe of any disability relative to life expectancy at age eighteen, %NYSD(18), by sex for Mexican states in 2020. Source: Author’s calculations based on Mexican Census 2020 (INEGI, 2020a) and statistics of deaths registered in 2020 (INEGI, 2020b)

Fig. 4

Percentage of life years spent with more severe of any disability relative to life expectancy at age eighteen by sex, for Mexican regions and states in 2020. Note: States are ordered within each region from highest to lowest percentage of any type of disability for females. Source: Author’s calculations based on Mexican Census 2020 (INEGI, 2020a) and statistics of deaths registered in 2020 (INEGI, 2020b)