International study shows how global life expectancy declined during the pandemic
The research, published in 'The Lancet,' and conducted in collaboration with the UC, provides new data on the mortality impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing that average life expectancy decreased by 1.6 years between 2019 and 2021.
An international study with the participation of UC researchers and published in the prestigious journal 'The Lancet,' reveals new data on changes in mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing that average life expectancy — the average number of years a person is expected to live based on statistical data — decreased by around 1.6 years between 2019 and 2021.
The international team of researchers analysed data from 204 countries, providing an important contribution to the analysis and understanding of global population health trends. In Portugal, global average life expectancy fell by 0.5 years in the first two years of the pandemic.
The study was led by Austin Schumacher, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, with the participation of Mónica Rodrigues, a researcher at the Centre for Studies on Geography and Spatial Planning (CEGOT) at the University of Coimbra (UC), and João Diogo Basso, a PhD student at the UC Faculty of Pharmacy, conducted in the scope of the ‘Global Burden of Disease Study’ (GBD) 2021, which brought together more than 1,800 researchers to study global health trends and diseases.
Mónica Rodrigues describes this study as the most comprehensive insight into the impact of the pandemic on human health to date and reveals that “among adults, the pandemic has had a more profound impact than any other event in the last 50 years, including conflicts and natural disasters, with life expectancy decreasing in 84% of the 204 surveyed countries.”
The CEGOT researcher also points out that “during the pandemic, mortality among the elderly increased at a rate unprecedented in the last 70 years, whereas child mortality continued to decline.” Mónica Rodrigues emphasises that “although the pandemic was devastating, killing around 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, it did not erase overall global health progress — life expectancy increased by almost 23 years between 1950 and 2021.”
The scientific paper ‘Global age-sex-specific mortality, life expectancy, and population estimates in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1950–2021, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021’ is available here.