The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on life expectancy by race and ethnicity in the United States

Elizabeth Arias, Kenneth D. Kochanek and Betzaida Tejada-Vera

Chapter Chapter 2 in Handbook on Inequality and COVID-19, 2025, pp 15-34 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Between 2019 and 2021, life expectancy in the United States declined over two years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with considerable differences by race and ethnicity. We used the 2019 and 2021 complete period life tables for Hispanic, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native, non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White populations published by the National Center for Health Statistics and applied decomposition techniques to explore the effects of changes in age-, cause-, and age-cause-specific mortality in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 for each group by sex. We identified substantial differences in the age patterns of the relative increase in all-cause mortality by race and ethnicity whereby some groups experienced the majority of the effects in the working ages. Similarly, there were significant racial and ethnic differences in the magnitude of the impact of deaths due to COVID-19. Increases in mortality due to chronic and external causes of death, particularly drug overdoses, explained a substantial portion of the decline in life expectancy for some groups. Increases in all-cause, COVID-19, and drug overdose mortality in the working ages had larger effects on the decline in life expectancy among the more socioeconomically disadvantaged racial and ethnic populations.

Keywords: COVID-19; Life expectancy; Race; Ethnicity; Cause of death; Mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035302758
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