Comparing the loss of life expectancy at birth during the 2020 and 1918 pandemics in six European countries

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that reached Europe in 2020 has often been compared to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. In this article, we compare the two pandemics in terms of their respective impacts on the loss of life expectancy at birth in six European countries (France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland) by estimating life expectancy in 2020 using Eurostat data. We found that the loss of life expectancy at birth was up to 20 times larger between 1917 and 1918 than between 2019 and 2020. A decomposition of these losses clearly shows that in all six countries, the main contributors were older age groups in 2020 and younger age groups in 1918. These observations are consistent with evidence indicating that most COVID-19 fatalities were among the elderly, while a majority of Spanish flu fatalities were among the young.

On the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality: Lost years or lost days?

“…Using that concept, we could retrieve well-established results, e.g., that the COVID-19 pandemic affected more men than women, and mostly the elderly, while some countries (like Lithuania, Spain, or Belgium) were more affected than others (like Finland, Denmark, or Norway), as found e.g., in Islam et al ( 9 ) and Aburto et al ( 10 ). We could also confirm that the Spanish flu of 1918 had a much greater impact on mortality than COVID-19 in 2020 ( 11 ). But while life expectancy losses in 2020 amounted to a few months (or a little more than 1 year) in most of the countries considered, population life losses in 2020 amounted to a few days, so the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mortality may appear less dramatic on that scale.…”

Mortality in Switzerland in 2021

“…For example [12], estimated for Switzerland an excess death about 3 times higher in 1918 (compared to 1917) than in 2020 (compared to 2019). In terms of life expectancy, the ratio between the loss observed in 1918 and that of 2020 is rather 10:1 than 3:1 and, if the two losses are considered in proportion to the (very different) baseline life expectancy of the two periods, the ratio is around 20:1 [8]. The reason for this discrepancy is the different age distribution of the deaths due to the Spanish flu and those caused by COVID-19, the former affecting mostly young people and the latter people over 70.…”

“…It may also be useful to recall that the concept of life expectancy calculated in a given year in a given country, as used here and in [5][6][7][8][9][10][11], refers to the average life span of a hypothetical cohort of persons who would live and die according to the age and sex specific mortality rates observed in that year in that country. As noted by [22], a comparison of life expectancies of 2020 and 2019 thus informs us on the life lost for a hypothetical cohort of persons who would live their entire lives with a pandemic similar to COVID-19 in 2020.…”

“…There is now a large literature studying the impact of the pandemic on all-cause mortality during the year 2020 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. The latter has been evaluated for a large number of countries both from the point of view of the excess mortality (or excess deaths) [1][2][3][4] and from the perspective of the loss of life expectancy [5][6][7][8]. For Switzerland, an excess mortality of 9.2% has been estimated in 2020, which was significant from the age of 70 for men and 75 for women.…”

Two complementary approaches to estimate an excess of mortality: The case of Switzerland 2022

“…The situation is not necessarily the same in all countries. While life expectancy at birth tended to increase before the pandemic in most industrialized countries, including Switzerland [32][33][34], some stagnation has been observed in recent years in other countries such as the United States, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom [35][36][37][38][39]. Even in the former countries, the increasing trend in life expectancy may not last forever.…”