Open AccessLife expectancy drop in 2020. Estimates based on Human Mortality Database
Author(s) -
Stefano Mazzuco,
Stefano Campostrini
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0262846
Subject(s) - life expectancy , data science , biology , medicine , computer science , environmental health , population
In many countries of the world, COVID–19 pandemic has led to exceptional changes in mortality trends. Some studies have tried to quantify the effects of Covid-19 in terms of a reduction in life expectancy at birth in 2020. However, these estimates might need to be updated now that, in most countries, the mortality data for the whole year are available. We used data from the Human Mortality Database (HMD) Short-Term Mortality Fluctuations (STMF) data series to estimate life expectancy in 2020 for several countries. The changes estimated using these data and the appropriate methodology seem to be more pessimistic than those that have been proposed so far: life expectancy dropped in the Russia by 2.16 years, 1.85 in USA, and 1.27 in England and Wales. The differences among countries are substantial: many countries (e.g. Denmark, Island, Norway, New Zealand, South Korea) saw a rather limited drop in life expectancy or have even seen an increase in life expectancy.