Unequal trends in causes of death drive life-expectancy differences during COVID-19
Analyses of life expectancy are important and informative in the context of the pandemic because they allow comparisons of mortality conditions over time and across countries. However, most studies rely on all-cause mortality, and few of them quantify to what extent COVID-19 deaths contributed to observed life-expectancy changes during the pandemic years. Analysis of other causes of death (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, cancers, suicides) and their contribution to life-expectancy changes contribute to existing research by uncovering the indirect pathways through which the pandemic has affected mortality and population health. Using decomposition methods, we quantify age- and cause-specific contributions to life-expectancy changes in nine countries during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2020). We compare these contributions to the corresponding the five years before the pandemic (2015–2019) to identify whether and how existing patterns of life-expectancy changes were shifted.
Speaker
Dr Jose Manuel Aburto, LSHTM
Admission
Contact
