Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Mar;48(1):31-50.
doi: 10.1111/padr.12477. Epub 2022 Mar 12.

Global and National Declines in Life Expectancy: An End-of-2021 Assessment

Patrick Heuveline  1
Affiliations

Global and National Declines in Life Expectancy: An End-of-2021 Assessment

Patrick Heuveline. Popul Dev Rev. 2022 Mar.

Abstract

Timely, high-quality mortality data have allowed for assessments of the impact of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on life expectancies in upper-middle- and high-income countries. Extant data, though imperfect, suggest that the bulk of the pandemic-induced mortality might have occurred elsewhere. This article reports on changes in life expectancies around the world as far as they can be estimated from the evidence available at the end of 2021. The global life expectancy appears to have declined by 0.92 years between 2019 and 2020 and by another 0.72 years between 2020 and 2021, but the decline seems to have ended during the last quarter of 2021. Uncertainty about its exact size aside, this represents the first decline in global life expectancy since 1950, the first year for which a global estimate is available from the United Nations. Annual declines in life expectancy (from a 12-month period to the next) appear to have exceeded two years at some point before the end of 2021 in at least 50 countries. Since 1950, annual declines of that magnitude had only been observed on rare occasions, such as Cambodia in the 1970s, Rwanda in the 1990s, and possibly some sub-Saharan African nations at the peak of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest The author has no conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Estimates of excess deaths by country group and reported COVID-19 deaths, 2020–2021, by quarter
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Global life expectancy, 2010–2021 (both sexes, in years)
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Global life expectancy, by 12-month period ending in each quarter of 2020 and 2021 (both sexes, in years)
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Annual change in life expectancy, 2019–2021 (both sexes, in year)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aburto José Manuel, Schöley Jonas, Kashnitsky Ilya, Zhang Luyin, Rahal Charles, Missov Trifon I, Mills Melinda C, Dowd Jennifer B, and Kashyap Ridhi. 2021. “Quantifying Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic Through Life-Expectancy Losses: A Population-Level Study of 29 Countries.” International Journal of Epidemiology 51(1): 63–74. 10.1093/ije/dyab207. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Adam David. 2022. The Pandemic’s True Death Toll: Millions More Than Official Counts, Nature January 18, 2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00104-8. - PubMed
    1. Ahmad Farida B., and Anderson Robert N. 2021. “The Leading Causes of Death in the US for 2020.” Journal of the American Medical Association 325(18): 1829–1830. 10.1001/jama.2021.5469. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Andrasfay Theresa, and Goldman Noreen. 2021. “Reductions in 2020 US Life Expectancy Due to COVID-19 and the Disproportionate Impact on the Black and Latino Population.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118(5): e2014746118. 10.1073/pnas.2014746118. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ashton Basil, Hill Kenneth, Piazza Alan, and Zeitz Robin. 1984. “Famine in China, 1958–61.” PDR 10(4): 613–645.