Journal article
Quantifying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through life expectancy losses: a population-level study of 29 countries
- Abstract:
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Background
Variations in the age patterns and magnitudes of excess deaths, as well as differences in population sizes and age structures, make cross-national comparisons of the cumulative mortality impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic challenging. Life expectancy is a widely used indicator that provides a clear and cross-nationally comparable picture of the population-level impacts of the pandemic on mortality.Methods
Life tables by sex were calculated for 29 countries, including most European countries, Chile and the USA, for 2015–2020. Life expectancy at birth and at age 60 years for 2020 were contextualized against recent trends between 2015 and 2019. Using decomposition techniques, we examined which specific age groups contributed to reductions in life expectancy in 2020 and to what extent reductions were attributable to official COVID-19 deaths.Results
Life expectancy at birth declined from 2019 to 2020 in 27 out of 29 countries. Males in the USA and Lithuania experienced the largest losses in life expectancy at birth during 2020 (2.2 and 1.7 years, respectively), but reductions of more than an entire year were documented in 11 countries for males and 8 among females. Reductions were mostly attributable to increased mortality above age 60 years and to official COVID-19 deaths.Conclusions
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered significant mortality increases in 2020 of a magnitude not witnessed since World War II in Western Europe or the breakup of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. Females from 15 countries and males from 10 ended up with lower life expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1093/ije/dyab207
Authors
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Journal:
- International Journal of Epidemiology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 51
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 63–74
- Publication date:
- 2021-09-26
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-09-08
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1464-3685
- ISSN:
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0300-5771
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1167809
- Local pid:
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pubs:1167809
- Deposit date:
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2021-04-21
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Aburto et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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