TOPLINE The Covid-19 pandemic caused one of the biggest drops in life expectancy since World War II, according to research published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, with American men and women suffering the biggest losses.
KEY FACTS
Of the 29 countries studied by researchers from the University of Oxford, just Denmark and Norway did not see a drop in life expectancy in 2020, according to demographic data.
The U.S. recorded the biggest losses in both men and women—2.2 years and 1.65 years compared to 2019 levels, respectively—something Ridhi Kashyap, co-lead author of the study, said could be partly explained by the “notable increase in” deaths among working aged people due to Covid-19.
Men experienced bigger drops in life expectancy compared to women in most of the countries studied, falling by more than a year for men in 11 countries and in eight for women.
After the U.S., women in Spain and men in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Poland experienced the biggest drops in life expectancy, falling 1.5 years or more.
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To put the numbers in context, co-lead author José Manuel Aburto said it took an average of 5.6 years “for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy… progress wiped out over the course of 2020 by Covid-19.”
CRUCIAL QUOTE
Aburto said the Covid-driven losses were, for many Western European countries like Spain, England, Wales, Italy and Belgium, so large that the last time “such large magnitudes of declines in life expectancy at birth were observed in a single year was during WW-II.”
KEY BACKGROUND
The countries that successfully avoided drops in life expectancy (which partly included Finland, which staved off a decline in women only) implemented “early non-pharmaceutical interventions” and had strong healthcare systems. The researchers said these factors likely contributed towards the countries’ successes. The U.S. suffering the biggest drop in life expectancy is unsurprising. It has suffered more Covid-19 deaths than any other country, a burden that has, as many health issues, disproportionately fallen on people of color. Earlier studies have shown the U.S. to have experienced a far worse drop in life expectancy than other high income nations like the U.K. and Sweden. Despite an abundant vaccine supply, every adult (and many children) having been eligible for months and having a head start over much of the world, many in the U.S. remain unvaccinated and the country is facing a huge surge of hospitalizations and deaths.
FURTHER READING
Quantifying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through life-expectancy losses: a population-level study of 29 countries (International Journal of Epidemiology)
By Robert Hart, Forbes Staff
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