Estimating the Global Economic Cost of Violence: Methodology Improvement and Estimate Updates

This paper presents significant methodological improvements on Estimating the Global Costs of Violence. It also presents updated estimates of the global economic impact of violence at $14.8 trillion in 2017. This is equivalent to 12.4 per cent of global GDP or $1,988 per person. In the analysis, 163 countries are examined accounting for 99.5 per cent of the global population. The estimate is comprised of three domains which aggregate to yield a global estimate of the economic impact of violence. These three domains are the costs of interpersonal violence, the costs of collective violence and the expenditures on violence containment. A model of the economic cost of violence is established using a bottom-up accounting approach. This model follows the methodology of the 2018 Global Peace Index (GPI).