Background Variations in the age patterns and magnitudes of excess deaths, as well as differences in population sizes and age structures, make cross-national comparisons of the cumulative mortality impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic challenging. Life expectancy is a widely used indicator that provides a clear and cross-nationally comparable picture of the population-level impacts of the pandemic on mortality. Methods Life tables by sex were calculated for 29 countries, including most European countries, Chile and the USA, for 2015–2020. Life expectancy at birth and at age 60 years for 2020 were contextualized against recent trends between 2015 and 2019. Using decomposition techniques, we examined which specific age groups contributed to reductions in life expectancy in 2020 and to what extent reductions were attributable to official COVID-19 deaths. Results Life expectancy at birth declined from 2019 to 2020 in 27 out of 29 countries. Males in the USA and Lithuania experienced the largest losses in life expectancy at birth during 2020 (2.2 and 1.7 years, respectively), but reductions of more than an entire year were documented in 11 countries for males and 8 among females. Reductions were mostly attributable to increased mortality above age 60 years and to official COVID-19 deaths. Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic triggered significant mortality increases in 2020 of a magnitude not witnessed since World War II in Western Europe or the breakup of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. Females from 15 countries and males from 10 ended up with lower life expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015.

In Biodemography, aging is typically measured and compared based on aging rates. We argue that this approach may be misleading, because it confounds the time aspect with the mere change aspect of aging. To disentangle these aspects, here we utilize a time-standardized framework and, instead of aging rates, suggest the shape of aging as a novel and valuable alternative concept for comparative aging research. The concept of shape captures the direction and degree of change in the force of mortality over age, which—on a demographic level—reflects aging. We 1) provide a list of shape properties that are desirable from a theoretical perspective, 2) suggest several demographically meaningful and non-parametric candidate measures to quantify shape, and 3) evaluate performance of these measures based on the list of properties as well as based on an illustrative analysis of a simple dataset. The shape measures suggested here aim to provide a general means to classify aging patterns independent of any particular mortality model and independent of any species-specific time-scale. Thereby they support systematic comparative aging research across different species or between populations of the same species under different conditions and constitute an extension of the toolbox available to comparative research in Biodemography.

The COVID-19 pandemic halted longevity improvements and mortality reductions at older ages in 2020. Life expectancy at birth - a widely-used indicator of population health - declined from 2019 to 2020 in 24 out of 26 countries for which high-quality vital statistics are presently available, including most European countries, Chile and the USA. Males in the USA and Bulgaria experienced the largest losses in life expectancy at birth during 2020 (2.1 and 1.6 years respectively), but staggering reductions of more than an entire year were documented in eleven countries for males, and seven among females; a magnitude of loss not witnessed since WW-II in many countries. Reductions were mostly attributable to increased mortality above age 60 and to official COVID-19 deaths.

Inter-individual variance in longevity (or any other demographic outcome) may arise from heterogeneity or from individual stochasticity. Heterogeneity refers to differences among individuals in the demographic rates experienced at a given age or stage. Stochasticity refers to variation due to the random outcome of demographic rates applied to individuals with the same properties. The variance due to individual stochasticity can be calculated from a Markov chain description of the life cycle. The variance due to heterogeneity can be calculated from a multistate model that incorporates the heterogeneity. We show how to use this approach to decompose the variance in longevity into contributions from stochasticity and heterogeneous frailty for male and female cohorts from Sweden (1751–1899), France (1816–1903), and Italy (1872–1899), and also for a selection of period data for the same countries.Heterogeneity in mortality is described by the gamma-Gompertz–Makeham model, in which a gamma distributed “frailty” modifies a baseline Gompertz–Makeham mortality schedule. Model parameters were estimated by maximum likelihood for a range of starting ages. The estimates were used to construct an age×frailty-classified matrix model, from which we compute the variance of longevity and its components due to heterogeneous frailty and to individual stochasticity. The estimated fraction of the variance in longevity due to heterogeneous frailty (averaged over time) is less than 10% for all countries and for both sexes. These results suggest that most of the variance in human longevity arises from stochasticity, rather than from heterogeneous frailty.