US Life Expectancy Lags behind European Countries

In a recent article published in Nature Human Behavior, researchers looked at how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted life expectancy. It’s abundantly clear that COVID — especially in the early days of the pandemic — reduced life expectancy. The new preventative and treatment measures, such as vaccines, oral antivirals, and public health practices, should have helped return life expectancy to previous rates. However, the US lags behind European countries in the race to return to pre-pandemic life expectancy.

“By the end of 2021, it was clear that the pandemic had induced a protracted mortality shock in the United States and many European countries, measured as either compounded life expectancy losses or persistent life expectancy below pre-pandemic levels. Even the best-performing countries were lagging behind their life expectancy projections for 2021 given a continuation of pre-pandemic trends,” researchers wrote.

Of the 29 countries in this study, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, and France were relatively close to their pre-pandemic life expectancies. Conversely, the US has continued to suffer from lower life expectancy rates. The country was already suffering from a premature mortality crisis exacerbated by the pandemic.

Despite the reduced life expectancy, researchers attribute a portion of the deaths to external (i.e., non-COVID) causes such as drug overdose.

In the publication, investigators conclude, “while COVID-19 has been the most severe global mortality shock since World War II, we will have to wait to know whether and how longer-term life expectancy trends are altered by the pandemic. Extrapolating our findings from 2021, it is plausible that countries with ineffective public health responses will see a protracted health crisis induced by the pandemic, with medium-term stalls in life expectancy improvements, while other regions manage a smoother recovery to return to pre-pandemic trends.”

The research revealed in this study should incentivize clinicians and public health professionals to examine practices in the US. Improved educational efforts and stricter public health protocols may have improved outcomes in the US.