Corona reduced life expectancy in Austria in 2020

Since World War II, life expectancy has risen sharply in most high-income countries. For example, although this development weakened in the Anglo-American countries around the turn of the millennium, there has been no relapse in the past 70 years such as that caused by Covid-19, write the authors of the study led by Jonas Schöley of the Max Planck Institute. for Demographic Research Research in Rostock (Germany). With colleagues, he analyzed data on population trends in 29 countries since 2020 – including Austria.

Covid situation as an exception
While it is common for death rates to vary from year to year, the situation surrounding the spread of Covid-19 is as of spring 2020. Only a few countries such as Norway, Finland or Denmark or Australia and New Zealand did not report a fall in 2020 life expectancy. The following year, however, the picture became significantly “more complex,” the scientists write. This already showed the effects of previous infections, the effectiveness of containment measures and the effects of vaccination campaigns, which dampened the death rates.

For Austria, the study shows a loss of life expectancy of minus 8.1 months for 2020 compared to 2019. The life expectancy for women was 83.6 years in 2020 and 78.9 years for men. But then the trend reversed: the value rose again by 0.5 months in 2021. Compared to 2019, the minus was 7.6 months. Austria is therefore approximately in the same range as Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, England and Wales or Slovenia. What all these states have in common is that a trend reversal was noticeable.

Bend in Germany less steep but longer
Not so in Germany, where the minus in the first year of the pandemic was small at 2.6 months, but then increased further in 2021 to 5.7 months compared to 2019, the analysis shows. In addition, the researchers identified a group of countries (France, Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden) where life expectancy losses were sometimes high in 2020, but were almost fully compensated the following year.

In much of Eastern Europe, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, in the US and Chile, the picture is completely different: here the downward trend continued – albeit to very different degrees. For Bulgaria, the comparison of life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 shows a minus of 43 months. In Slovakia it is 33 and in the US just over 28 months.

Broad vaccination campaigns in response
While countries with significantly lower life expectancy soon launched broad vaccination campaigns, implemented effective containment measures and had high capacity in the health system, vaccination rates in much of Eastern Europe lagged behind those in more Western countries.

In the US, Covid-19 has reinforced the already existing phenomenon that relatively many men under the age of 60 die there. Covid-19 has also joined common causes such as drug overdose and violent crime. Vaccination coverage among 50- to 64-year-olds in the US is also significantly lower than among those over 65, the scientists write. The greater prevalence of obesity and diabetes in the US may also have played a role.

Looking at Europe, it is clear that many countries have succeeded in controlling death rates above the age of 80 after 2020. For example, the fact that life expectancy has increased slightly overall in Austria in 2021 is due to the “normalization” of the death rate in the older age cohorts.