Life expectancy in many countries has not recovered following COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented rise in mortality that translated into life expectancy losses around the world - and in many countries, life expectancy has still not recovered, new research published in Nature Human Behaviour reveals.

The article was co-authored by the Department’s Professor Ridhi Kashyap, Professor Jenn Dowd and Dr José Manuel Aburto, along with others from the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

The co-authors explain the impacts of their paper in a piece for The Conversation, with the research also covered by BBC Health.

Using data from 29 European countries, as well as Chile and the US, the paper found that life expectancy in 2021 remained lower than expected across all 31 countries, had pre-pandemic trends continued.

Previous epidemics, such as global outbreaks of flu, have seen life expectancy levels bounce back fairly rapidly, but the magnitude and persistence of COVID-19’s impact on mortality has been very different, and the expected bounce back has not been seen. Only in four countries - Belgium, France, Sweden and Switzerland – has life expectancy returned to the level it was in 2019.

The data also shows a clear geographical divide. Most of Western Europe experienced at least partial life expectancy bounce backs; in contrast, Eastern Europe and the US witnessed worsening losses in life expectancy, something that can be attributed to vaccine uptake.

Countries that rolled out vaccines quickly, to all age groups – and therefore had higher proportions of fully vaccinated people – experienced smaller life expectancy losses.

A notable example is Bulgaria, where life expectancy decreased by a year and half in 2020 and a further two years in 2021, results likely caused by vaccine uptake (or lack thereof) – by the end of 2021 just one-quarter of Bulgarians were vaccinated, and only 37% of over-60s, the lowest rate in the EU.

The paper concludes that countries with low vaccine uptake or poor public health responses will likely continue to suffer life expectancy losses while other countries will manage to return to pre-pandemic trends.

Original Publication

Schöley, J., Aburto, J.M., Kashnitsky, I. et al. 2022. "Life expectancy changes since COVID-19." Nat Hum Behav. DOI:10.1038/s41562-022-01450-3