Authored by: Venkat Rao
Breakthrough health research and innovations in biotechnology and medicine doubled the life expectancy of human race in the past century. Innovations such as vaccines, antibiotics, sanitation systems, and artificial fertilizers drove humanity’s most impressive measure of progress—living a longer and healthier life. According to the World Health Organization, life expectancy at birth by 2019 had increased to 73.4 years and healthy life expectancy (HALE) also increased by 8% from 58.3 years in 2000 to 63.7 in 2019. Life expectancy at birth and HALE are true measures of the foundational progress in human condition achieved by the humanity at-large.
By definition, life expectancy refers to the number of years a person can expect to live. The average age of members of a particular population when they die is generally referred to as life expectancy in that population. Studies indicate factors such as the genes we inherit, access to healthcare, diet and nutrition, public health, lifestyle factors and even crime plays a key role in determining life expectancy of a particular population group.
Only global cataclysmic events such as a pandemic or world war could have a direct impact on such a macro performance measure such as life expectancy at large and across population groups. We are now witnessing one such pandemic-driven cataclysm, where the life expectancy has fallen in most of the nations in the world. Life expectancy at birth in the United States fell by 1.8 years in 2020, the largest one-year drop since World War II.
According to a recent CDC report the life expectancy at birth in the United States declined from 77 to 76.1, nearly by a year, in 2021 and 1.8 year drop in 2020, accounting for the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1932. The decline in life expectancy at birth was even worse— which was by three years—for the minority communities such as Black and Hispanic Americans during 2020-2021.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) nearly 74% of the overall life expectancy decline was attributed to COVID-19 pandemic, as more than 3.3 million Americans died—far more than any other years in US history, with COVID accounting for up to 11% of the mortality.
These results were confirmed in a Journal of the American Medical Association Network report that the pandemic related life expectancy at birth loss by nearly 2 years in the United States was the highest among 21 other economically advanced nations. Researchers have used different study models to analyze and predict the trends in life expectancy at birth both before and after the pandemic.
As evidence begin to mount on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 pandemic, United States is the worst affected when compared to other countries in its peer group. Preliminary data shown in the graphic illustrate that the pandemic has increased gap in life expectancy at birth between US and other similar economically developed nations.
Notably, life expectancy at birth in the US was on a steady rise from 1980 to 2014 when it fell for the first time due to increase in opioid overdose deaths, the numbers shot back up in 2018 and 2019 reaching back up to 78.8 years. This was just before the pandemic stuck,
According to a publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on life expectancy at birth and at age 65 years in the United States for 2020, a reduction by 1.13 year on life expectancy at birth, and a decline at age 65 years by nearly a year (0.87 year).
The decline in life expectancy at birth was higher for Black and Latino populations, which fell by 2.1 and 3 years, respectively. The projected gap in decline of life expectancy was 40% between the Black-White population groups, which range from 3.6 to over 5 years.
According to a report from Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) titled “Health in the Americas 2022”, the American Continent is home to nearly 13% of the world’s population, reported 176 million cases of COVID-19 between early 2020 to August 2022 accounting for 37% of all confirmed pandemic cases, and 45% of deaths globally.
Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on life expectancy at birth is global. Researchers from the Max Plank Institute and the University of Oxford published a few days ago results of a study on all-cause mortality and life expectancy changes in 29 countries, the United States, most of Europe and Chile.
Apart from COVID-19 related loss of life in 2020, the life expectancy fell further in 2021 in 12 countries with Bulgaria and Slovakia losing 2 years, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary by nearly a year. Evidently, United States faced the most damaging impact on life expectancy at birth and continue to show substantial and sustained losses.
Why United States continues to struggle with declining life expectancy due to COVID-19 pandemic?
Life expectancy at birth dramatically fell in the United States during the pandemic years showing the sharpest decline in life expectancy in nearly 100 years. As noted above, life expectancy at birth fell from 79 years in 2019 to 76 years in 2021, a gaping decline by 3 years.
The decline was even steeper for minority communities, for example, life expectancy was 65 years among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, which takes these communities to as far back to 1944 on this key metric. The decline in life expectancy in these communities is the lowest in the American continent and just above Haiti. 2021 life expectancy at birth numbers for White Americans continues to drop as well, with a one year drop from 77.4 in 2020 to 76.4 in 2021. The decline was by four years from 81.9 to 77.for the Hispanic Americans, and by more than three years for African Americans during that period.
Life expectancy is not merely a metric for progress in public health, it is also a measure of the health security achieved through investments in healthcare, wellness, safe and secure living environment to all citizens. Cataclysmic events such as war and pandemic differentially impact population groups depending on the levels of health security collectively achieved by the community at-large. Therefore, the disparities in life expectancy decline at national and population subgroup levels is a measure of health security gap as well.
Life expectancy is a notable metric of human progress that took decades and centuries to get to where we were before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it may take many years to recover on this metric and reclaim progress.
As Wendell Phillips, an American Abolitionist, observation, “Every step in progress which the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold and from stake to stake” succinctly describes our present situation as we collectively begin to recover and move past the wrath of COVID-19 pandemic.