Study: U.S. life expectancy dropped amid coronavirus pandemic

Jun. 25—A new study, co-authored by a University of Colorado Boulder assistant professor, found life expectancy in the United States dropped by nearly two years between 2018 and 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The findings, published Wednesday in "The BMJ," a medical journal of the British Medical Association, show the pandemic exacerbated a decades-long trend in falling life expectancy. The drop also was greater among people of color, slipping 3.25 years for Black Americans and nearly four years for Hispanic Americans, compared to 1.36 years for white Americans.

Life expectancy for a Black man today is 68 years, the lowest it has been since 1998, according to the study. U.S. life expectancy also declined 8.5 times more than the average for 16 peer countries, the study found. The peer countries were chosen based on high income levels and advanced democracies.

The study was coauthored by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, Virginia Commonwealth University and the Urban Institute.

Co-author Ryan Masters, an assistant professor of sociology at CU Boulder's Institute of Behavioral Science, said the United States was on a concerning downward trajectory for life expectancy when compared to other countries, but the declines were marginal — until the pandemic.

"The absolute decrease in life expectancy was far greater than the reductions experienced by populations in other peer countries (during the pandemic)," he said. "It was almost a whole two years reduction."

Factors that led the United States to lose ground on life expectancy included rampant obesity, heart disease and similar disorders, he said. Inequities in access to health care and systemic racism also played a role, he said. Middle-aged and younger adults saw an increase in deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide.

When the pandemic hit, those existing factors — added to what the authors describe as a disorganized and disjointed pandemic response — created a "perfect storm" of lives lost, according to the study.

"Most horrifically and tragically, the loss of life fell along racial and ethnic lines in the United States," Masters said. "The size of these losses in the Black and Latino populations was entirely predictable. The pandemic was overlayed on top of an already vulnerable population in already vulnerable health."

He said the loss of life in the United States during the pandemic also occurred at much younger ages than in most of the peer countries, where deaths were concentrated among those 65 and older. The majority of life expectancy lost among the male population in the United States was due to deaths below age 65, the study found.

"It really pushed back on the narrative," Masters said.

The researchers used death data from the National Center for Health Statistics to come up with age-, sex- and race-specific life expectancy in 2020.

Masters said researchers didn't look at COVID-specific deaths in 2020 because of data challenges and a desire to show the full ramifications of a pandemic that wasn't "effectively managed." All-cause mortality in the United States increased by 23% in 2020. To date, more than 600,000 people in the United States have died of COVID, the most of any country in the world, according to the study.

While there will be ongoing studies investigating the United States' COVID-19 response, he said, the study urges policymakers to look beyond the pandemic.

"What we wanted to do was try to broaden the conversation to spotlight the deeply rooted problems that made us especially vulnerable to the pandemic," he said. "If we don't address those problems, we're going to remain vulnerable going forward."

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United States life expectancy

Overall

* 2020: 79.75 years for women, 74.06 years for men

* 2010: 81.04 years for women, 76.20 years for men

Black populations

* 2020: 75.34 years for women, 67.73 years for men

* 2010: 77.70 years for women, 71.51 years for men

U.S. Hispanic populations

* 2020: 81.38 years for women, 74.50 for men

* 2010: 84.26 years for women; 78.84 years for men

Overall in 16 peer countries

* 2020: 81.56 years

* 2010: 80.54 years

Source: "Effect of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 on life expectancy across populations in the USA and other high income countries: simulations of provisional mortality data"