How Covid Is Starting To Reduce US Life Expectancy

Average US life expectancy is going to decline for the first time in years due to the rise in deaths from Covid and the related reduction in the fertility rate as fewer families choose to have children given the risks. JL

Janet Adamy reports in the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. life expectancy inched up last year but in 2020 could decline by the largest amount since World War II, as Covid-19 becomes the nation’s third-leading cause of death. Life expectancy rose to 78.8 years in 2019. The main drivers were lower death rates from heart disease and cancer. (But) for 2020, life expectancy could fall two to three years. As of Monday, it had killed 319,000 people in the U.S. Last year, heart disease killed 659,000, cancer killed 600,000, and deaths from accidents 173,000. The U.S. fertility rate (will) decline as the weak economy and health concerns dissuade women from having children

U.S. life expectancy inched up last year but in 2020 could decline by the largest amount since World War II, as Covid-19 becomes the nation’s third-leading cause of death.

Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tuesday showed that life expectancy rose to 78.8 years in 2019, an increase of one-tenth of a year, marking the second consecutive year of progress on the key measure of national well-being.

The main drivers were lower death rates from heart disease and cancer, the country’s no. 1 and no. 2 causes of death, respectively, said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality-statistics branch of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The death rate from drug overdoses rose after declining the prior year, while the suicide death rate fell for the first time since 2005.

Last year’s slim gain will be erased by a large drop in longevity when the government releases 2020 figures next year. Mr. Anderson said he performed a simple simulation based on mortality figures through August and found that life expectancy had declined by about 1½ years. For the full year, he expects that life expectancy could fall by two to three years.

“We’ve had a lot of deaths added since August, so I think a drop of two to three years for 2020 isn’t out of the question,” Mr. Anderson said. He said his figures are rough estimates and that the government needs complete data to measure the exact impact of the pandemic on U.S. mortality.

A drop of that magnitude would mark the largest decline in life expectancy since 1943, when World War II deaths pushed that metric down by 2.9 years, Mr. Anderson said. It would still be a much smaller decline than in 1918, when the so-called Spanish Flu caused life expectancy to fall by 11.8 years, he said. That is in part because, unlike Covid-19, that flu was particularly deadly among children, whose deaths disproportionately drive down life expectancy.

Daily reported Covid-19 deaths in the U.S.

Notes: For all 50 states and D.C., U.S. territories and cruises. Last updated Dec. 22, at 6:20 a.m.
Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering

Covid-19 is expected to be the third leading cause of death in 2020. As of Monday, it had killed more than 319,000 people in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Last year, heart disease killed about 659,000 people, cancer killed nearly 600,000 people, and deaths from accidents—the third leading cause of death—totaled about 173,000, according to CDC figures. More than 2.85 million people died in the U.S. last year, the highest number on record.

Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, said he estimates that the pandemic will cause deaths to outpace births in more than half of U.S. counties in 2020 for the first time in U.S. history.

The U.S. general fertility rate dropped to its lowest level on record last year, and is expected to decline further as the weak economy and health concerns dissuade women from having children. “We’ve got people dying and hospital rooms jammed,” Prof. Johnson said. “Who’s going to want to have a baby?”

Prof. Johnson said that based on his estimates, rural parts of the U.S. will be harder hit by the phenomenon of deaths outnumbering births. “Losing some people is a lot more impactful when everybody knows everybody than in a big urban area,” he said.

America was making progress on lowering mortality rates before the pandemic arrived, and it was reversing some ground it lost during the middle of the last decade. Last year the death rate declined for non-Hispanic whites and Blacks while staying about flat for Hispanics.

Of the top 10 leading causes of death, rates declined for seven of them: heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney disease, flu and pneumonia, and suicide. The rates remained about flat for stroke and diabetes. Flu and pneumonia were grouped together as one category.

The one exception was the rate of deaths by unintentional injury: drug deaths helped push that rate up 2.7%.

The only age group that saw a notable increase in mortality was people ages 35 to 44, whose death rates increased 2.3% in 2019. Mr. Anderson said that was likely driven by drug-overdose deaths.