A country’s life expectancy curves are the story of its history. The 1918 flu, the Great Depression, and World War II were visible on the chart for the United States. Now the pandemic is leaving a new notch in history. Life expectancy at birth fell to 76.1 years for the second straight month in 2021, according to preliminary data released by health officials this Wednesday. In the first two years of the pandemic, the decline was 2.7 years, the sharpest since 1943, when it fell from 66.2 to 63.3 years in the middle of World War II.
Life expectancy at birth measures how many years, on average, newborns have to live if mortality patterns in a given year are maintained for the rest of their lives. The drop to 76.1 years leaves life expectancy at its lowest level since 1996, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. These are values that have not been reached since this year for either men (whose life expectancy has fallen to 73.2 years) or women (79.1 years). This six-year gender gap is also the widest since 1996.
The pandemic, which has claimed more than a million lives in the United States, more than in any other country in the world, has not affected everyone equally. In the United States, the Native American and Alaskan Native populations have been particularly affected, the group among which it has fallen most dramatically. For them, it now stands at 65.2 years, after a cumulative decline of 6.6 years between 2020 and 2021. The life expectancy of a Native American is now equal to that of the average American in 1944.
The loss in life expectancy was also greater among Hispanics (4.2 years) and African Americans (4 years) than non-Hispanic Whites (2.4 years) and Asians (2.1 years). The excess of deaths during these two years of the pandemic has shortened life expectancy for men (3.1 years) more than for women (2.3 years).
The 1918 flu
Despite the tragedy of the coronavirus and the sharp deterioration in statistics, it’s a far cry from what happened with the 1918 flu, the misnamed Spanish flu. That year, life expectancy fell drastically from 50.9 to 39.1 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Nevertheless, a change in life expectancy measured in years like that of 2020 and 2021 reflects a very large increase in mortality.
The decrease in life expectancy is the balance between increases in mortality from certain causes and decreases in other causes. Apparently, Covid was the main cause of the decline, accounting for half of the negative contribution, followed at a wide margin by accidents and drug overdoses (collected under the Accidental Injuries chapter), heart attacks and suicides. In addition to its direct impact, it is more difficult to measure how Covid has indirectly affected the treatment of other diseases due to the saturation of health services.
On the other hand, mortality from common flu and pneumonia, as well as respiratory diseases not associated with Covid, has decreased, certainly due to preventive measures such as the use of masks or social distancing imposed by the coronavirus but beneficial to other diseases to avoid. Mortality from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and newborn health complications has also decreased.
The sharp decline in life expectancy for two consecutive years places the United States further from other western countries. Chronic health insurance problems, obesity and relatively high homicide rates put the country far from the levels of Canada, Australia, Japan and most developed European countries, where life expectancy exceeds 80 years (in Spain it was 82.4 years in 2020). ). The US is now registering similar levels as in 2019 (pre-pandemic) in countries like Morocco, Algeria, China or much of the countries of South America.
Data released by the National Center for Health Statistics are preliminary, early estimates based on received, processed, and coded death certificates, but are not definitive. Death certificate information may be verified and additional death certificates may be received up to approximately six months after the year end. The fluctuations in the final data compared to the preliminary ones are usually not large in the main aggregates.