Reductions in US life expectancy during the COVID-19 pandemic by race and ethnicity: Is 2021 a repetition of 2020?

Andrasfay, Theresa; Goldman, Noreen

doi:10.1101/2021.10.17.21265117

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Recent evidence shows that in 2021 life expectancy continued to decrease in the United States, with an estimated further drop of 0.3 mo on top of 2020 losses ( 5 ). Relative to 2020, 2021 was also characterized by a shift to younger ages at death for COVID-19 for all racial/ethnic groups ( 61 , 62 ). Racial/ethnic disparities in life-expectancy reductions due to COVID-19 persisted but were smaller than in 2020, with Black and Hispanic people experiencing reductions 1.3–1.9 times those of White people.…”

Section: Outlook and Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on race/ethnic differences in US mortality

Aburto

Tilstra

Floridi

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic triggered global declines in life expectancy. The United States was hit particularly hard among high-income countries. Early data from the United States showed that these losses varied greatly by race/ethnicity in 2020, with Hispanic and Black Americans suffering much larger losses in life expectancy compared with White people. We add to this research by examining trends in lifespan inequality, average years of life lost, and the contribution of specific causes of death and ages to race/ethnic life-expectancy disparities in the United States from 2010 to 2020. We find that life expectancy in 2020 fell more for Hispanic and Black males (4.5 and 3.6 y, respectively) compared with White males (1.5 y). These drops nearly eliminated the previous life-expectancy advantage for the Hispanic compared with the White population, while dramatically increasing the already large gap in life expectancy between Black and White people. While the drops in life expectancy for the Hispanic population were largely attributable to official COVID-19 deaths, Black Americans saw increases in cardiovascular diseases and “deaths of despair” over this period. In 2020, lifespan inequality increased slightly for Hispanic and White populations but decreased for Black people, reflecting the younger age pattern of COVID-19 deaths for Hispanic people. Overall, the mortality burden of the COVID-19 pandemic hit race/ethnic minorities particularly hard in the United States, underscoring the importance of the social determinants of health during a public health crisis.

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Section: Outlook and Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on race/ethnic differences in US mortality

Aburto

Tilstra

Floridi

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…The impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy at birth ( e 0 ) in these countries has received widespread attention from the media: a decline of 1.3-years in Brazil and 1.8-years in the US for 2020 (Castro et al 2021; Murphy et al 2021). Declines are even larger in 2021 (Andrasfay and Goldman 2022; Castro et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

COVID-19 is not an Independent Cause of Death

Castro

Gurzenda

Turra

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The COVID-19 pandemic has had overwhelming global impacts with deleterious social, economic, and health consequences. To assess the COVID-19 death toll researchers have estimated declines in 2020 life expectancy at birth. Because data are often available only for COVID-19 deaths, the risks of dying from COVID-19 are assumed to be independent of those from other causes. We explore the soundness of this assumption based on data from the US and Brazil, the countries with the largest number of reported COVID-19 deaths. We use three methods. One estimates the difference between 2019 and 2020 life tables and therefore does not require the assumption of independence. The other two assume independence to simulate scenarios in which COVID-19 mortality is added to 2019 death rates or is eliminated from 2020 rates. Our results reveal that COVID-19 is not independent of other causes of death. The assumption of independence can lead to either an overestimate (Brazil) or an underestimate (US) of the decline in e0, depending on how the number of other reported causes of death changed in 2020.

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“…Usually, the age-specific mortality probabilities are based on the mortality data of three consecutive calendar years (e.g., [2015][2016][2017]. If one considers this method of calculating life expectancy, it becomes clear that life expectancy as an indicator of a population's health status can comprehensively trace the impact of, e.g., wars and other social disasters like the influenza pandemic in 1918-2020 on the concerned societies in history [12,13], improvements in economic conditions [14,15], specific developments in medical knowledge and innovations in the health care system based on these developments [16][17][18][19][20], of political developments [21,22] or currently of the direct and indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) on life expectancy in contemporary societies [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Determinants of Remaining Life Expectancy at Age 60: A District-Level Analysis in Germany

Siegel

Schug

2022

IJERPH

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Remaining life expectancy at age 60 (in short: RLE) is an important indicator of the health status of a population’s elders. Until now, RLE has not been thoroughly investigated at the district level in Germany. In this study we analyzed, based on recent publicly available data (2015–2017), and for men and women separately, how large the RLE differences were in Germany across the 401 districts. Furthermore, we examined a wide range of potential social determinants in terms of their bivariate and multivariate (i.e., partial) impact on men’s and women’s RLE. Men’s district-level RLE ranged between 19.89 and 24.32 years, women’s district-level RLE between 23.67 and 27.16 years. The best single predictor both for men’s and women’s RLE at district level was ‘proportion of employees with academic degree’ with standardized partial regression coefficients of 0.42 (men) and 0.51 (women). Second and third in rank were classic economic predictors, such as ‘household income’ (men), ‘proportion of elder with financial elder support’ (women), and ‘unemployment’ (men and women). Indicators expressing the availability of medical services and staffing levels of nursing homes and services had at best a marginal partial impact. This study contributes to the growing body of evidence that a population’s educational level is a decisive determinant of population health resp. life expectancy in contemporary industrialized societies.

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Reductions in US life expectancy during the COVID-19 pandemic by race and ethnicity: Is 2021 a repetition of 2020?

Cited by 12 publications

References 45 publications

Significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on race/ethnic differences in US mortality

Significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on race/ethnic differences in US mortality

COVID-19 is not an Independent Cause of Death

Social Determinants of Remaining Life Expectancy at Age 60: A District-Level Analysis in Germany

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