US life expectancy drops most since WWII, study says — COVID deaths aren’t only reason

Life expectancy at birth in the U.S. has decreased by 1.87 years or 2.4% from 2018 to 2020 — the largest drop the nation has seen since World War II, according to a new multi-institution study. The decrease for those aged 25 and 65 were even greater at 3.4% and 5.7%, respectively.

And building on evidence collected throughout the pandemic, communities of color were affected the most.

Among white people, life expectancy declined by 1.36 years in 2020. But it dropped by 3.88 years in Hispanic people and 3.25 years in Black people, nearly erasing improvements made over the years in race-related mortality gaps.

Data on Native Americans was not analyzed because of a lack of information, although the group has experienced high deaths rates during the pandemic.

Overall, men had a 2.16-year drop in life expectancy while women had a 1.5-year drop.

The decrease in American life expectancy was also 8.5 times higher than the average loss seen in 16 other high-income countries, including France, Israel, Spain, New Zealand and the U.K.

Researchers say the “predominant cause for this large decline” was the massive death toll from COVID-19, as well as other disruptions caused by the pandemic, such as “reduced access to healthcare, economic pressures and mental health crises,” that are likely to make a dent on how long Americans are expected to live.

“Although life expectancy is expected to recover in time to levels before the pandemic, past pandemics have shown that survivors can be left with lifelong consequences, depending on their age and other socioeconomic circumstances,” the researchers wrote in their study published Thursday in The BMJ.

Since the pandemic began, the U.S. has had the most coronavirus cases and deaths in the world and among the highest per capita mortality rates, with more than 33.5 million and 603,000 as of June 24, respectively; COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death in the U.S. last year after heart disease and cancer.

As a result of pandemic-related disruptions, “all cause mortality” increased by 23% in the U.S. in 2020.

“To give some perspective, when the decline in life expectancy was happening a few years ago, it was a decrease of about 0.1 years each year that was making front-page news,” study lead author Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health, said in a statement. “That’s the kind of increase or decrease that we’re accustomed to each year.”

But 2020’s drop in life expectancy of 1.87 years is “massive” in comparison, he added. “It’s like nothing we’ve seen since World War II.”

Since the 1980s, though, life expectancy trends have been “very worrying” and not keeping pace with other high income countries because of other “conditions that produced a U.S. health disadvantage,” Woolf said.