Covid has cut life expectancy in many countries, disproportionately among men.Of the 29 countries studied by researchers from the University of Oxford, just Denmark and Norway did not see a drop in life expectancy in 2020, according to demographic data.
The U.S. recorded the biggest losses in both men and women—2.2 years and 1.65 years compared to 2019 levels, respectively—something Ridhi Kashyap, co-lead author of the study,could be partly explained by the “notable increase in” deaths among working aged people due to Covid-19. Men experienced bigger drops in life expectancy compared to women in most of the countries studied, falling by more than a year for men in 11 countries and in eight for women.
After the U.S., women in Spain and men in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Poland experienced the biggest drops in life expectancy, falling 1.5 years or more. To put the numbers in context, co-lead author José Manuel Aburto said it took an average of 5.6 years “for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy… progress wiped out over the course of 2020 by Covid-19.”Aburto said the Covid-driven losses were, for many Western European countries like Spain, England, Wales, Italy and Belgium, so large that the last time “such large magnitudes of declines in life expectancy at birth were observed in a single year was during WW-II.