The COVID-19 pandemic reduced life expectancy in the United States in 2020 by more than a year, from roughly 78.5 years to 77.5 years, an analysis published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found.
Life expectancy for Black people in the United States could fall by more than two years, while it may drop by more than three years for Latino people, the data showed.
For White people, it could fall by less than a year, according to the researchers.
The virus killed more than 336,000 people in the United States last year, due in part to higher fatality rates among Black and Latino people, compared to White people, the researchers said.
“We know that these groups are frequently employed in front-line jobs and have higher rates of some conditions that increase the risk of [death] from COVID-19,” said Andrasfay, a postdoctoral fellow in the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Although life expectancy for Black people has historically been lower than that for White people, COVID-19 appears to have eliminated many of the gains made in closing these gaps since the early 2000s, according to the researchers.
Latino people, who have consistently had higher life expectancy than White people, could see their more than three-year survival advantage over whites reduced to less than one year because of the virus’ toll, the researchers said.
For this analysis, the researchers estimated life expectancy at birth and at age 65 for 2020 for the total U.S. population and by race and ethnicity.
They used four scenarios of deaths: one in which the COVID-19 pandemic had not occurred and three others that included COVID-19 death projections.
