Life expectancy changes since COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented rise in mortality that translated into life expectancy losses around the world, with only a few exceptions. We estimate life expectancy changes in 29 countries since 2020 (including most of Europe, the United States and Chile), attribute them to mortality changes by age group and compare them with historic life expectancy shocks. Our results show divergence in mortality impacts of the pandemic in 2021. While countries in western Europe experienced bounce backs from life expectancy losses of 2020, eastern Europe and the United States witnessed sustained and substantial life expectancy deficits. Life expectancy deficits during fall/winter 2021 among people ages 60+ and <60 were negatively correlated with measures of vaccination uptake across countries (r60+ = −0.86; two-tailed P < 0.001; 95% confidence interval, −0.94 to −0.69; r<60 = −0.74; two-tailed P < 0.001; 95% confidence interval, −0.88 to −0.46). In contrast to 2020, the age profile of excess mortality in 2021 was younger, with those in under-80 age groups contributing more to life expectancy losses. However, even in 2021, registered COVID-19 deaths continued to account for most life expectancy losses.

The contribution of population age-sex structure to the excess mortality estimates of 2020–2021 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden

“…We investigated the impact of sex and age on the pandemic excess mortality in the five Nordic countries, using final annualized register death data. Our estimates agree well with those by the WHO 44 and life expectancy studies 18 , which is encouraging since our approach is conceptually simple, transparent, easily reproducible, and easily subject to sensitivity tests. Our study quantifies the mortality impact of the pandemic in the Nordic countries and indicates roles of mortality displacement, higher mortality for men, and important country-specific variations in mortality patterns.…”

“…For precise measures of excess mortality, we believe our estimates using fully commensurable data, no parameters, and a time-period that reduces mortality fluctuations of 2018 and 2019, but the conclusions are largely similar, which provides confidence to both approaches, and for perspective on more countries, without a need for very accurate excess death estimates for the Nordics, we thus recommend this work, which does not suffer from the horizontal baseline assumption (See below), as it allows for the trend in improving pre-pandemic mortality 18 .…”

“…Our study can also be compared to life-expectation studies. 16,18 The life expectancy deficit was calculated from the differences between observed life expectancy and a Lee-Carter mortality forecast using the death rates for the fourth quarter of 2015−2019 18 . These provide the best comparative mortality results so far but used relatively few age groups and 5-year data.…”

“…The most important studies so far in this direction are the age-and sex specific life-expectation studies 16,18 , which also included the five Nordic countries and confirmed them as having some of the lowest mortality impacts overall in Europe, while also documenting the mortality reversal from 2020 to 2021 16 . Previous age-and sex-adjusted estimates for Sweden specifically for the first COVID-19 wave in 2020 have also been published 19 .…”

Espérance de vie et Covid : remettre les pendules à l’heure

“…Nous avions déjà insisté, dans une chronique précédente [1], sur le caractère à la fois informatif et irréfutable du paramètre « espérance de vie » et de son évolution dans le temps. L'article analysé ici [2] en fournit une excellente démonstration, infirmant les affirmations d'une gestion particulièrement catastrophique de la pandémie de Covid 19 en France, et démontrant de manière évidente le rôle très positif de la vaccination. Ces informations méritent d'être largement diffusées ; c'est en partie le cas [7].…”