Reductions in US life expectancy from COVID-19 by Race and Ethnicity: Is 2021 a repetition of 2020?

Abstract

AbstractCOVID-19 had a huge mortality impact in the US in 2020 and accounted for most of the overall reduction in 2020 life expectancy at birth. There were also extensive racial/ethnic disparities in the mortality impact of COVID-19 in 2020, with the Black and Latino populations experiencing reductions in life expectancy at birth over twice that of the White population. Despite continued vulnerability of the Black and Latino populations, the hope was that widespread distribution of effective vaccines would mitigate the overall impact and reduce racial/ethnic disparities in 2021. In this study, we use cause-deleted life table methods to estimate the impact of COVID-19 mortality on 2021 US period life expectancy. Our estimates, based on provisional COVID-19 deaths for 2021, indicate that racial/ethnic disparities have persisted and that COVID-19 deaths resulted in a decline in life expectancy at birth in 2021 of 1.7 years from pre-pandemic levels, 0.4 years more than estimated for 2020. The corresponding reductions estimated for the Black and Latino populations are 1.3-1.9 times that for Whites, suggesting smaller disparities than those in 2020. However, this narrowing is almost entirely the result of a large increase in COVID-19 mortality among Whites in 2021, in contrast to relatively constant reductions for the Black and Latino populations in the two years. Estimated declines in life expectancy at age 65 increased slightly for Whites between 2020 and 2021 but decreased for both the Black and Latino populations, resulting in the same overall reduction (1.1 years) estimated for 2020 and 2021.