A team led by Viennese demographers has discovered how the pandemic has affected the death and birth rates of European countries. According to the evaluation, twelve (2020) or ten percent (2021) more people died in Austria than in 2019 – a significantly lower increase than in many countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Life expectancy has fallen slightly in this country. However, the pandemic caused a slight increase in the number of births.
“No major effect” was seen in births across Europe, Tomáš Sobotka of the Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) said Tuesday. Already at the start of the first lockdown in the spring of 2020, there was lively speculation about a ‘corona baby boom’. However, the actual development went in the opposite direction – at least at the start of the pandemic.
The first lockdowns depressed the birth rate
From the end of the first year of the pandemic, nine months after the first lockdowns, most states have seen birthrate declines almost everywhere. In December 2020, Austria recorded a minus of five percent compared to the number of births in the same month in 2019. By comparison: the EU average was minus eight percent, the first lockdown hit the hardest in Spain (21 percent fewer births yearly). year-on-year comparison at the end of 2020).
For Sobotka, the most obvious explanation for this is the “uncertainty” in the initial phase of the pandemic, especially where it claimed a relatively large number of victims and states responded with rigid containment measures. In the spring of 2021, however, the minus turned into a slight increase in the average birth rate in the EU. Already in February 2021, Austria registered a slightly higher number of births compared to February 2020. The first signs that “the pandemic is over” in the first Corona summer and the insight that the labor market is not solving should be here effect, Brzozowska and Sobotka explained.
As a result, there was also a relatively strong increase in births in Germany in the autumn of 2021. In the winter lockdowns before that, some couples seem to have resumed their family plans. For example, there were many second and third births in Austria at the end of 2021.
Fewer effects in Northern Europe
The development in Northern Europe is different: here you hardly see a fall in birth rates as a result of the first phase of the pandemic and then an often striking and constant increase. Here, the pandemic “may have brought less stress” to much of society than in our latitudes, Sobotka said.
Covid-19 brought very large differences in the death rates and thus in the development of life expectancy. In Kosovo, the death toll in 2020 and 2021 was 36 percent higher than in 2019. The increases in Albania (34 percent), Russia and Bulgaria (28 percent each) and North Macedonia (26 percent) were equally dramatic. Demographers say these values are the highest since World War II and are internationally comparable to the rise in AIDS deaths in parts of Africa in the 1990s.
Lower excess mortality in the west
The excess mortality recorded in this country has also not been recorded since World War II. However, it was almost always much lower in the western countries of Europe than in many southern and eastern countries. Poor pandemic management, sometimes lax compliance with measures and low vaccination coverage have led to a significant decrease in life expectancy there. This exacerbated the divergence in life expectancy in Europe that existed before the pandemic.
Russians live on average 17 years less than Spaniards
Since the start of the pandemic, the life expectancy of Russian women has fallen by an average of 3.7 years. The average Spaniard (life expectancy: 85.9 years) can now expect to live eleven years longer than women in Russia (74.4 years). The life expectancy of Russian men (65.5 years) is no less than 17 years shorter than that of Swiss men (82.3 years). Significant losses in life expectancy (about minus two years) were also recorded in the Czech Republic and Hungary.
In Germany the loss was just under half a year and therefore slightly lower than in Germany. Life expectancy in Austria in 2020 was 83.6 years for women and 78.9 years for men. Compared to the pre-Corona year 2019, it decreased by 0.6 years for Austrians and 0.8 years for Austrians. With the exception of Sweden, which registered a similar excess death rate to Central European countries, especially at the start of the pandemic, Covid-19 hardly changed life expectancy in many Scandinavian countries, according to the experts.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
