Pandemic causes largest drop in US life expectancy since WWII

The pandemic has exacerbated racial disparities in the United States

Credit: Courtesy of Thomas A. LaVeist via AP

Life expectancy in the United States dropped by a full year in the first half of 2020 because of Covid-19, the biggest decrease since the Second World War.

The average lifespan for American citizens in the first six months of last year was 77.8, down from 78.8 a year before, according to preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“What is really quite striking in these numbers is that they only reflect the first half of the year… I would expect that these numbers would only get worse,” Dr Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a health equity researcher at the University of California San Francisco told the Associated Press.

The decline was particularly steep among ethnic minorities, with the life expectancy of Black Americans dropping nearly three years, from 74.7 to 72 and that of Hispanic Americans 81.8 to 79.9.

The pandemic has hit minority communities in the United States especially hard. Black Americans are nearly three times as likely to be hospitalised and twice as likely to die from Covid-19, according to the CDC, despite being only 10 per cent more likely to catch it. 

The pandemic has also reversed decades of effort to narrow the life expectancy gap between Black and White Americans. In the latest figures, it stands at six years, up from 4.1 in 2019.

“This kind of excess mortality is representing structural inequalities that have existed for a long time that increase both the risk of exposure to virus and the risk of dying from the virus,” Prof Noreen Goldman, professor of demography and public affairs at Princeton University, told PBS

Black Americans were more likely to work in frontline jobs, face unemployment and lack access to healthcare, all factors which raised their risk of death, Prof Goldman said.