In 2020, the life expectancy at birth in India reduced by two years due to Covid-19, a new study published by researchers from the International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has found. The reduction, according to the authors, was due to the excess deaths caused by Covid-19 in the 35-79 age group.
In 2020, the life expectancy at birth in India reduced by two years due to Covid-19, a new study published by researchers from the International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has found. The reduction, according to the authors, was due to the excess deaths caused by Covid-19 in the 35-79 age group.
The study published on Thursday in BMC Public Health, a peer-reviewed journal, also highlighted that the age-wise mortality disruptions caused by the pandemic impacted more men than women. “The inequality in the deaths by age groups was higher in men,” said Suryakant Yadav from IIPS, who co-authored the paper along with Pawan Kumar Yadav from IIPS and Neha Yadav from JNU. “It could be because men were exposed more to the external factors compared to women,” he said.
Life expectancy at birth reflects the overall mortality level of a population, according to the World Health Organization. It summarises the mortality pattern that prevails across all age groups - children and adolescents, adults and the elderly.
For the study, the authors retrieved data between January 30, 2020 and December 31, 2020 from Covid-19-India Application Programming Interface (API) portal available in the public domain. They also retrieved data of 21 causes of deaths compiled under the Global Burden of Disease. “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.
A life table presents a set of tabulations that describe the probability of dying, the death rate and the number of survivors for each age or age group.
The study said that Covid-19 disease demonstrates its potential to cancel the gains of six to eight years in life expectancy at birth and five years in inequality in age at death. “The Covid-19 pandemic has negative repercussions on life expectancy and inequality in age at death and has slowed the mortality transition in India,” it said.