In 2021, a woman in the United States aged 65 years could expect to live another 19.7 years on average. This number decreased in the years 2020 and 2021, after reaching a high of 20.8 years in 2019. Nevertheless, the life expectancy of a woman aged 65 years in the United States is still higher than that of a man of that age. In 2021, a man aged 65 years could be expected to live another 17 years on average.
Why has the life expectancy in the U.S. declined? Overall, life expectancy in the United States has declined in recent years. In 2019, the life expectancy for U.S. women was 81.4 years, but by 2021 it had decreased to 79.3 years. Likewise, the life expectancy for men decreased from 76.3 years to 73.5 years in the same period. The biggest contributors to this decline in life expectancy are the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid epidemic. Although deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic have decreased significantly since 2022, deaths from opioid overdose continue to increase, reaching all-time highs in 2021.
The leading causes of death among U.S. women The leading causes of death among women in the United States in 2020 were heart disease, cancer, and COVID-19. That year heart disease and cancer accounted for a combined 37 percent of all deaths among women, while around 10 percent of deaths were due to COVID-19. The overall leading causes of death in the United States generally reflect the leading causes among women with some slight variations. For example, Alzheimer’s disease is the fourth leading cause of death among women, but the seventh leading cause of death overall in the United States.
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Data for Figures and Tables in "Bounce backs amid continued losses: Life expectancy changes since COVID-19"
cc-by Jonas Schöley, José Manuel Aburto, Ilya Kashnitsky, Maxi S. Kniffka, Luyin Zhang, Hannaliis Jaadla, Jennifer B. Dowd, and Ridhi Kashyap. "Bounce backs amid continued losses: Life expectancy changes since COVID-19".
These are CSV files of data in the figures and tables published in the paper "Bounce backs amid continued losses: Life expectancy changes since COVID-19".
50-e0diffT.csv
Figure 1: Life expectancy changes 2019/20 and 2020/21 across countries. The countries are ordered by increasing cumulative life expectancy losses since 2019. Grey dots indicate the average annual LE changes over the years 2015 through 2019.
51-arriagaT.csv
Figure 2: Age contributions to life expectancy changes since 2019 separated for 2020 and 2021. The position of the arrowhead indicates the total contribution of mortality changes in a given age group to the change in life expectancy at birth since 2019. The discontinuity in the arrow indicates those contributions separately for the years 2020 and 2021. Annual contributions can compound or reverse. The total life expectancy change from 2019 to 2021 in a given country is the sum of the arrowhead positions across age.
52-sexdiff.csv
Figure 3: Change in the female life expectancy advantage from 2019 through 2021. Blue colors indicate an increase and red colors a decrease in the female life expectancy advantage. Muted colors indicate non-significant changes.
53-e0diffcodT.csv
Figure 4: Life expectancy deficit in 2021 decomposed into contributions by age and cause of death. LE deficit is defined as observed minus expected life expectancy had pre-pandemic mortality trends continued.
55-vaxe0.csv
Figure 5: Years of life expectancy deficit during October through December 2021 contributed by ages <60 and 60+ against % of population twice vaccinated by October 1st in the respective age groups. LE deficit is defined as the counterfactual LE from a Lee-Carter mortality forecast based on death rates for the fourth quarter of the years 2015 to 2019 minus observed LE.
54-tab_arriaga.csv
Table 1: Months of life expectancy (LE) changes and deficits (labelled ES) since the start of the pandemic attributed to age-specific mortality changes (labelled AT). LE deficit is defined as observed minus expected life expectancy had pre-pandemic mortality trends continued.
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Daily global COVID-19 data for all countries, provided by Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE). If you want to use the update version of the data, you can use our daily updated data with the help of api key by entering it via Altadata.
In this data product, you may find the latest and historical global daily data on the COVID-19 pandemic for all countries.
The COVID‑19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2). The outbreak was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on 11 March. As of 12 August 2020, more than 20.2 million cases of COVID‑19 have been reported in more than 188 countries and territories, resulting in more than 741,000 deaths; more than 12.5 million people have recovered.
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center is a continuously updated source of COVID-19 data and expert guidance. They aggregate and analyze the best data available on COVID-19 - including cases, as well as testing, contact tracing and vaccine efforts - to help the public, policymakers and healthcare professionals worldwide respond to the pandemic.
The countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide include the Nigeria, Chad, and Lesotho. As of 2023, people born in Nigeria could be expected to live only up to ** years. This is almost ** years shorter than the global life expectancy. Life expectancy The global life expectancy has gradually increased over the past couple decades, rising from **** years in 2011 to **** years in 2023. However, the years 2020 and 2021 saw a decrease in global life expectancy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, life expectancy can vary greatly depending on the country and region. For example, all the top 20 countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide are in Africa. The countries with the highest life expectancy include Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Japan. Causes of death The countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide are all low-income or developing countries that lack health care access and treatment that more developed countries can provide. The leading causes of death in these countries therefore differ from those of middle-income and upper-income countries. The leading causes of death in low-income countries include diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as preterm birth complications, which do not cause substantial death in higher income countries.
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This dataset seeks to provide insights into what has changed due to policies aimed at combating COVID-19 and evaluate the changes in community activities and its relation to reduced confirmed cases of COVID-19. The reports chart movement trends, compared to an expected baseline, over time (from 2020/02/15 to 2020/02/05) by geography (across 133 countries), as well as some other stats about the country that might help explain the evolution of the disease.
Bing COVID-19 data. Available at: https://github.com/microsoft/Bing-COVID-19-Data COVID-19 Community Mobility Report. Available at: https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/ COVID-19: Government Response Stringency Index. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index Coronavirus (COVID-19) Testing. Available at: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/master/public/data/testing/covid-testing-all-observations.csv Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccination. Available at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/owid/covid-19-data/master/public/data/vaccinations/vaccinations.csv List of countries and dependencies by population. Available at: https://www.kaggle.com/tanuprabhu/population-by-country-2020 List of countries and dependencies by population density. Available at: https://www.kaggle.com/tanuprabhu/population-by-country-2020 List of countries by Human Development Index. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/data Measuring Overall Health System Performance. Available at: https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf?ua=1 List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita. Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD List of countries by age structure (65+). Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS
For the week ending June 27, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were 568 below the number expected, compared with 375 below what was expected in the previous week. In late 2022 and through early 2023, excess deaths were elevated for a number of weeks, with the excess deaths figure for the week ending January 13, 2023, the highest since February 2021. In the middle of April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were almost 12,000 excess deaths a week recorded in England and Wales. It was not until two months later, in the week ending June 19, 2020, that the number of deaths began to be lower than the five-year average for the corresponding week. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 deaths in the United Kingdom, making that year the deadliest since 1918, at the height of the Spanish influenza pandemic. As seen in the excess death figures, April 2020 was by far the worst month in terms of deaths during the pandemic. The weekly number of deaths for weeks 16 and 17 of that year were 22,351, and 21,997 respectively. Although the number of deaths fell to more usual levels for the rest of that year, a winter wave of the disease led to a high number of deaths in January 2021, with 18,676 deaths recorded in the fourth week of that year. For the whole of 2021, there were 667,479 deaths in the UK, 22,150 fewer than in 2020. Life expectancy in the UK goes into reverse In 2022, life expectancy at birth for women in the UK was 82.6 years, while for men it was 78.6 years. This was the lowest life expectancy in the country for ten years, and came after life expectancy improvements stalled throughout the 2010s, and then declined from 2020 onwards. There is also quite a significant regional difference in life expectancy in the UK. In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for example, the life expectancy for men was 81.5 years, and 86.5 years for women. By contrast, in Blackpool, in North West England, male life expectancy was just 73.1 years, while for women, life expectancy was lowest in Glasgow, at 78 years.
Global life expectancy at birth has risen significantly since the mid-1900s, from roughly 46 years in 1950 to 73.2 years in 2023. Post-COVID-19 projections There was a drop of 1.7 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, between 2019 and 2021, however, figures resumed upon their previous trajectory the following year due to the implementation of vaccination campaigns and the lower severity of later strains of the virus. By the end of the century it is believed that global life expectancy from birth will reach 82 years, although growth will slow in the coming decades as many of the more-populous Asian countries reach demographic maturity. However, there is still expected to be a wide gap between various regions at the end of the 2100s, with the Europe and North America expected to have life expectancies around 90 years, whereas Sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to be in the low-70s. The Great Leap Forward While a decrease of one year during the COVID-19 pandemic may appear insignificant, this is the largest decline in life expectancy since the "Great Leap Forward" in China in 1958, which caused global life expectancy to fall by almost four years between by 1960. The "Great Leap Forward" was a series of modernizing reforms, which sought to rapidly transition China's agrarian economy into an industrial economy, but mismanagement led to tens of millions of deaths through famine and disease.
Between 1953 and 2021, the death rate of the United Kingdom fluctuated between a high of 12.2 deaths per 1,000 people in 1962 and a low of 8.7 in 2011. From 2011 onwards, the death rate creeped up slightly and, in 2020, reached 10.3 deaths per 1,000 people. In 2021, the most recent year provided here, the death rate was ten, a decline from 2020 but still higher than in almost every year in the twenty-first century. The recent spike in the death rate corresponds to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, with the first cases recorded in early 2020. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 deaths in the United Kingdom, the highest in more than a century. Although there were fewer deaths in 2021, at 667,479, this was still far higher than in recent years. When looking at the weekly deaths in England and Wales for this time period, two periods stand out for reporting far more deaths than usual. The first period was between weeks 13 and 22 of 2020, which saw two weeks in late April report more than 20,000 deaths. Excess deaths for the week ending April 17, 2020, were 11,854, and 11,539 for the following week. Another wave of deaths occurred in January 2021, when there were more than 18,000 deaths per week between weeks three and five of that year. Improvements to life expectancy slowing Between 2020 and 2022, life expectancy in the United Kingdom was approximately 82.57 years for women and 78.57 years for men. Compared with life expectancy in 1980/82 this marked an increase of around six years for women and almost eight years for men. Despite these long-term developments, improvements to life expectancy have been slowing in recent years, and have declined since 2017/19. As of 2022, the country with the highest life expectancy in the World was Japan, which was 84.5 years, followed by South Korea, at 83.6 years.
There were 10,075 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending June 27, 2025, compared with 10,411 in the previous week. During this time period, the two weeks with the highest number of weekly deaths were in April 2020, with the week ending April 17, 2020, having 22,351 deaths, and the following week 21,997 deaths, a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Death and life expectancy As of 2022, the life expectancy for women in the UK was just over 82.5 years, and almost 78.6 years for men. Compared with 1765, when average life expectancy was under 39 years, this is a huge improvement in historical terms. Even in the more recent past, life expectancy was less than 47 years at the start of the 20th Century, and was under 70 as recently as the 1950s. Despite these significant developments in the long-term, improvements in life expectancy stalled between 2009/11 and 2015/17, and have even gone into decline since 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, for example, life expectancy at birth fell by 23 weeks for females, and 37 weeks for males. COVID-19 in the UK The first cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom were recorded on January 31, 2020, but it was not until a month later that cases began to rise exponentially. By March 5 of this year there were more than 100 cases, rising to 1,000 days later and passing 10,000 cumulative cases by March 26. At the height of the pandemic in late April and early May, there were around six thousand new cases being recorded daily. As of January 2023, there were more than 24.2 million confirmed cumulative cases of COVID-19 recorded in the United Kingdom, resulting in 202,156 deaths.
As of 2023, the countries with the highest life expectancy included Switzerland, Japan, and Spain. As of that time, a new-born child in Switzerland could expect to live an average of **** years. Around the world, females consistently have a higher average life expectancy than males, with females in Europe expected to live an average of *** years longer than males on this continent. Increases in life expectancy The overall average life expectancy in OECD countries increased by **** years from 1970 to 2019. The countries that saw the largest increases included Turkey, India, and South Korea. The life expectancy at birth in Turkey increased an astonishing 24.4 years over this period. The countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide as of 2022 were Chad, Lesotho, and Nigeria, where a newborn could be expected to live an average of ** years. Life expectancy in the U.S. The life expectancy in the United States was ***** years as of 2023. Shockingly, the life expectancy in the United States has decreased in recent years, while it continues to increase in other similarly developed countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and increasing rates of suicide and drug overdose deaths from the opioid epidemic have been cited as reasons for this decrease.
The countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide include the Chad, Lesotho, and Nigeria. As of 2022, people born in Chad could be expected to live only up to 53 years. This is almost 20 years shorter than the global life expectancy. Life expectancy The global life expectancy has gradually increased over the past couple decades, rising from 70.53 years in 2011 to 72.79 years in 2019. However, the years 2020 and 2021 saw a decrease in global life expectancy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, life expectancy can vary greatly depending on the country and region. For example, all the top 20 countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide are in Africa. The countries with the highest life expectancy include Liechtenstein, Japan, and Switzerland. Causes of death The countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide are all low-income or developing countries that lack health care access and treatment that more developed countries can provide. The leading causes of death in these countries therefore differ from those of middle-income and upper-income countries. The leading causes of death in low-income countries include diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as preterm birth complications, which do not cause substantial death in higher income countries.
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Do file and dataset for dominance analysis on US age at death distributions (data sourced from CDC life tables).
Abstract: Diverging mortality trends at different ages motivate the monitoring of lifespan inequality alongside life expectancy. Conclusions are ambiguous when life expectancy and lifespan inequality move in the same direction or when inequality measures display inconsistent trends. We propose using non-parametric dominance analysis to obtain a robust ranking of age-at-death distributions. Application to United States period life tables for 2006-2021 reveals that, until 2014, more recent years generally dominate earlier years implying improvement if longer lifespans that are less unequally distributed are considered better. Improvements were more pronounced for non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics than for non-Hispanic Whites. Since 2014, for all subpopulations—particularly, Hispanics—earlier years often dominate more recent years indicating worsening age-at-death distributions if shorter and more unequal lifespans are considered worse. Dramatic deterioration of the distributions in 2020-21 during the COVID-19 pandemic is most evident for Hispanics.
In 2022, life expectancy at birth for urban residents in Russia was 73.09 years. For those living in rural areas, it was approximately 71.6 years on average. Both urban and rural populations' average life span figures increased from the previous year. In total, Russians born in 2022 were expected to live roughly 72.7 years. Russia’s life expectancy is lower than in most other European countries and the United States. The Russian government set a national goal to achieve a life expectancy of 78 years by 2030. Change factors As in many other countries, life expectancy in Russia saw a decline in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and an increase in deaths from the disease. Even though the figure has increased since 2022 and exceeded pre-pandemic levels in 2023, the war in Ukraine and mobilization affect the indicator negatively. That particularly holds for men’s life expectancy, which has historically been significantly lower than women’s. Historical development In 2023, life expectancy in Russia was almost 44 years higher than in 1845. Over that period, the indicators experienced a decline during the World Wars, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and a series of famines in the mid-1900s. Moreover, the indicator decreased between 1970 and 1985, in part due to male life expectancy being impacted by alcohol consumption. The 2023 figure was the highest in Russia and the Soviet Union’s history.
In 2024, the total number of deaths in China amounted to around ***** million. The number of deaths increased slightly but steadily over the past two decades, only disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. This trend is mainly related to China’s demographic development and is expected to accelerate in the upcoming years. China’s aging society China had the second largest population on earth in 2024. However, population growth in China has gradually decreased over the last decades and finally turned negative in 2022. Together with steadily improving health standards and growing life expectancy, this has led to a quickly aging society. As relatively large age cohorts are now reaching the years of retirement, the number of elderly in the country is projected to increase quickly. This is especially visible in the number of people aged 80 years and above, which is expected to rise more than four-fold from ** million in 2020 to *** million in 2050. This development will probably be the main factor leading to a growing number of mortalities in China in the upcoming years. China’s mortality rate in comparison Globally, China’s mortality rate is at a low range at slightly less than eight deaths per thousand inhabitants annually. The low mortality rate was a result of political stability and steady improvements in the health system. As the Chinese population grows older, cancer, heart attacks, and cerebrovascular diseases are increasingly common causes of death. In comparison to most Western countries, the number of fatalities due to COVID-19 was low in 2020 and 2021, but there was a slight excess mortality in 2023 and. Most common infectious diseases with high death rates in China were *********************************** in 2021.
In 2024, Trentino-South Tyrol recorded the highest life expectancy in Italy for both women and men at 65 years old. Veneto followed in the ranking with the second-highest life expectancy at 65 years. In 2020, life expectancy in Italy decreased dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the largest number of deaths recorded in decades.
In 2022, the most common cause of death in Sweden was diseases of the circulatory system. More than 28,000 people died because of these diseases. Cancer was the second most common cause of death in Sweden. Furthermore, diseases of the respiratory system caused over 6,000 deaths in Sweden in 2022.
Ischemic heart disease most common cause
Chronic ischemic heart disease is the circulation system disease that causes the most number of deaths. When ischemic heart disease occurs, the arteries of the heart are blocked and the blood flow to the heart muscle is reduced. Heart attacks caused the second most deaths of the circulatory system diseases.
COVID-19
From 2019 to 2020, the total number of deaths in Sweden increased by around 10,000, almost reaching 100,000 in total. This can be explained by the more than 9,400 deaths caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19). At the beginning of the pandemic, the Swedish government tried a different approach than most other European countries, avoiding strict lockdowns and regulations. However, it has recorded a higher number of deaths and cases than the other Nordic countries. As of January 2023, nearly 23,000 people had died of COVID-19 in Sweden.
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The Funeral Directors, Crematoria and Cemeteries industry’s performance strongly depends on the number of deaths in Australia each year. For decades, medical advances, higher living standards and improved attitudes to health have helped lift the average life expectancy, slowing growth in the death rate. Government restrictions on funeral sizes from the fourth quarter of 2019-20 through part of 2021-22 lowered the average spend per funeral, leading to industry revenue declines over the two years through 2020-21. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the deaths of approximately 15,000 Australians between March 2020 and September 2022, but this represented a moderate proportion of total deaths in Australia, limiting its impact on revenue. Meanwhile, cremations’ increasing popularity has hindered revenue growth, as cremations typically generate less revenue per service. Major companies like InvoCare have reported they struggled over the two years through 2023-24 as consumers tried to cut back their spending amid high inflation and interest rates. The ACCC has also targeted the industry for increased enforcement, and combined, these factors have contributed to a dilution of the industry’s pricing power, limiting margin growth since 2021-22. Overall, industry revenue is expected to increase at an annualised 3.1% over the five years through 2024-25 to $2.0 billion. This trend includes an anticipated 4.2% spike in 2024-25. Most funeral directors are small, family-owned businesses. Funeral directors charge a professional services fee for conducting and managing core funeral services, like collecting and preparing the body for viewing, running the ceremony and transporting the body to the burial site or crematorium. Although governments or not-for-profit trusts own most cemeteries and crematoria, private companies increasingly own and operate these facilities. InvoCare is the largest company, accounting for more than one-quarter of industry revenue in 2024-25. The company was acquired by TPG Capital and delisted in November 2023. The market for funeral services will continue to expand over the coming years. A steady rise in annual deaths, an expanding population and recovering economic conditions will propel industry revenue growth. Even so, more families will choose lower priced cremation services over traditional burial services, limiting the pace of expansion and growth in margins. Industry revenue is forecast to climb at an annualised 4.8% over the five years through 2029-30 to $2.5 billion.
Deaths per week in Poland fluctuated strongly between 2019 and 2024. Nevertheless, the number of deaths in 2024 has generally fallen compared to previous years. To give an illustration: In the 52nd week of the calendar in 2024, 402 fewer people died compared to the same period in 2023. The most deaths in the observation period were recorded in the 45th calendar week of 2020, with 16,242. Diseases and their consequences The main reason for the sharp rise in deaths in 2020 was probably the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. By March 2023, almost 3,000 per one million people in Poland had died as a result of the virus. Although this is comparatively low compared to other CEE countries, the peak phase strongly influences the weekly death figures. Bulgaria was hit particularly heavily among the CEE countries in terms of deaths. Another factor can be various disease patterns in Poland. In May 2022, although 32 percent of diagnosed diseases were Covid-19, 29 percent were hypertension. Death rate in comparison In absolute figures, however, 2021 is the year with the most deaths in the observation period, with 519,500 deaths. In comparison, Hungary only had 155,620 deaths in the same period. Despite this, the average age in Poland has been rising for decades and will continue to do so in the coming decades. It is, therefore, interesting to note that while the death rate fluctuates, life expectancy is rising continuously.
Between 2002 and 2019, life expectancy at birth for both males and females in Italy constantly increased. It decreased in 2020 and reached **** years for males and **** years for females. After the COVID-19 pandemic, expecting living years settled to **** for men and **** for women.
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In 2021, a woman in the United States aged 65 years could expect to live another 19.7 years on average. This number decreased in the years 2020 and 2021, after reaching a high of 20.8 years in 2019. Nevertheless, the life expectancy of a woman aged 65 years in the United States is still higher than that of a man of that age. In 2021, a man aged 65 years could be expected to live another 17 years on average.
Why has the life expectancy in the U.S. declined? Overall, life expectancy in the United States has declined in recent years. In 2019, the life expectancy for U.S. women was 81.4 years, but by 2021 it had decreased to 79.3 years. Likewise, the life expectancy for men decreased from 76.3 years to 73.5 years in the same period. The biggest contributors to this decline in life expectancy are the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid epidemic. Although deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic have decreased significantly since 2022, deaths from opioid overdose continue to increase, reaching all-time highs in 2021.
The leading causes of death among U.S. women The leading causes of death among women in the United States in 2020 were heart disease, cancer, and COVID-19. That year heart disease and cancer accounted for a combined 37 percent of all deaths among women, while around 10 percent of deaths were due to COVID-19. The overall leading causes of death in the United States generally reflect the leading causes among women with some slight variations. For example, Alzheimer’s disease is the fourth leading cause of death among women, but the seventh leading cause of death overall in the United States.