Life Expectancy

New research this week puts the enormous loss of life caused by the covid-19 pandemic into greater context. The study of 29 countries across Europe and North and South America found that nearly all experienced a reduction in life expectancy last year, while some countries had the largest drops seen since World War II.

Life expectancy at birth is a commonly used metric of a country’s overall health. It estimates how long the average person born in a particular year (2020, for example) would be expected to survive, given current trends in mortality among different age groups. 

Over time, life expectancy has trended upward in many countries, thanks to more people living longer into their senior years. But when annual deaths increase significantly for whatever reason, especially when these deaths involve younger people, life expectancy can go down. 

In the U.S., for example, life expectancy had inched lower in recent years due largely to drug overdoses.

Researchers in the UK and Denmark tried to quantify the impact of the pandemic last year on the life expectancy of 29 countries, using mortality figures from 2015 to 2020. These countries included the U.S., Chile, and most of Europe. The results were published Monday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Overall, life expectancy dropped from 2019 to 2020 in 27 out of 29 countries, and 22 countries experienced a drop larger than half a year. 

Many countries saw a loss that effectively wiped out five years of progress, with women in 15 countries and men in 10 countries having a life expectancy lower than what was recorded in 2015.

Some, including the U.S., also experienced a year-to-year drop not seen since other great calamities like the end of the Soviet Union or World War II.  READ MORE...