Life Expectancy from Birth by County, New Mexico, 2018-2020

Why Is This Important?

Life Expectancy is often used to gauge the overall health of a community. Shifts in life expectancy are often used to describe trends in mortality. Being able to predict how populations will age has enormous implications for the planning and provision of services and supports. Small increases in life expectancy translate into large increases in the population. As the life expectancy of a population lengthens, the number of people living with chronic illnesses tends to increase because chronic illnesses are more common among older persons. Increases in life expectancy began to decline due to opioid deaths. In 2020, Life Expectancy took a significant downturn because of deaths from the corona virus, COVID-19.

Definition

Life expectancy is an estimate of the expected average number of years of life (or a person's age at death) for individuals who were born into a particular population. Life expectancy is sensitive to deaths to younger persons, such as infant mortality and injury deaths.

Data Sources

• New Mexico Death Data: Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS), Epidemiology and Response Division, New Mexico Department of Health.
  (https://www.nmhealth.org/about/erd/bvrhs/vrp/)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
  (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/)
• New Mexico Population Estimates: University of New Mexico, Geospatial and Population Studies (GPS) Program.
  (http://gps.unm.edu/)

How the Measure is Calculated

Data Issues

• Death Certificate Data

  Death certificate information is submitted electronically by funeral directors, who obtain demographic information from an informant, a close family member of the decedent. The NMDOH Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS) does annual trainings for funeral directors and local registrars and the death certificate information goes through extensive scrutiny for completeness and consistency. The cause of death is certified by the decedent's physician or the physician that attended the death. Accidental and suspicious deaths are certified by the Office of the Medical Investigator. When death certificates are received the cause of death literals are keyed into software locally by the BVRHS, then shipped to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) where they are machine coded into ICD-10 cause-of-death codes. NCHS returns the ICD-10 codes to BVRHS where the death records are updated.

• New Mexico Population Estimates

  All population estimates apply to July 1 of the selected year. These estimates are considered the most accurate estimates for the state of New Mexico and should match those found on the University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies website. Estimates include decimal fractions. Census tract population estimates were summed to produce County and Small Area population estimates. Population estimate totals may vary due to rounding. Population estimates for previous years are occasionally revised as new information becomes available. When publishing trend data, always be sure that your rates for earlier years match current rates on NM-IBIS that have been calculated with the most up-to-date population estimates.

Health Topic Pages Related to: Life Expectancy from Birth

• Summary Measures of Health Status