COVID-19 pandemic reduced life expectancy at birth in India by two years: Study

The study highlighted that the age-wise mortality disruptions caused by the pandemic impacted more men than women.

Representational Image (Credits: PTI)

New Delhi: The International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) released the findings of a new joint study on Thursday (October 21, 2021). The new study revealed that the in 2020 life expectancy at birth in India was reduced by two years due to COVID-19. 

As per the authors of the student, the reduction was due to the excess deaths caused by COVID-19 in the 35-79 age group. The study was published in a peer-reviewed journal, BMC Public Health on Thursday. The study also highlighted that the age-wise mortality disruptions caused by the pandemic impacted more men than women. 

A report in the Hindustan Times quoted one of the authors of the paper Suryakant Yadav from IIPS as saying, “The inequality in the deaths by age groups was higher in men...It could be because men were exposed more to the external factors compared to women.”

According to the World Health Organization, life expectancy at birth reflects the overall mortality level of a population. 

To conduct this study, the authors considered life expectancy data between January 30, 2020 and December 31, 2020 from COVID-19-India Application Programming Interface (API) portal available in the public domain.

“We collated these data sets and altogether had 22 causes of deaths with the addition of Covid-19. We used a life table methodology to analyse the impact of Covid-19 and found a drop of two years in the life expectancy at birth,” said Yadav.