The United States had the second-steepest decline in life expectancy among high-income countries last year during the pandemic, according to a study of death data spanning several continents.
The only country studied that saw a starker overall trend was Russia.
The study, published Wednesday in The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), assessed premature death in 37 countries, comparing observed life expectancy in 2020 with what would have been expected for the year based on historical trends from 2005-2019. Life expectancy dropped in 31 of these countries during the pandemic.
One surprise: The drop in life expectancy in the U.S. was driven by the deaths of young people, said Dr. Nazrul Islam, a researcher at the University of Oxford and the study’s lead author.
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