The average life expectancy has fallen significantly more during the corona pandemic in some federal states than in other parts of the republic. "In the period between 2019 and 2021, the southern regions of eastern Germany recorded the largest declines," said Markus Sauerberg from the Federal Institute for Population Research in Wiesbaden on Wednesday. The life expectancy determined in each case refers to the people born in the corresponding year.
In the federal states of Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia, which are particularly affected by Corona waves, according to the experts' calculations, the average life expectancy of newborn boys in 2021 was around a year and a half more than a year compared to the time before pandemic.
At the other end of the scale is Schleswig-Holstein. According to the data, life expectancy there even extended by 0.2 years between 2019 and 2021 for newborn boys, while there was a comparatively slight decrease in the forecasts for newborn girls with a minus of 0.2.
Throughout Germany, life expectancy in the course of the first Corona year 2020 in boys decreased by 0.2 years to 78.49 years and in girls by 0.1 years to 83.36 years, as can be seen from the calculations. When the alpha and deltavarians dominated in 2021, it was a further 0.4 for boys and for girls by 0.3 years. Before the start of pandemic, life expectancy in Germany had increased by about 0.1 years annually.
Actual statistics that are typical of a time of war
According to the experts, a falling life expectancy of more than a year is very unusual outside of war. "Designs of this size were last recorded at the end of the GDR," explains the research director at the Federal Institute Sebastian Klüsener, according to a press release. The strong regional differences should be explained, among other things, with the infection situation, the corona measures taken and the behavior of the population. The proximity to neighboring countries, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, also plays a role.
However, life expectancy fell significantly more sharply in these two countries than in the eastern German federal states, where a particularly large number of people were ill with corona. In the Czech Republic and Poland, life expectancy decreased by two and 2.4 years for men, and by 1.5 and 2 years for women.
For life expectancy, it is determined which average lifestyle would achieve newborns if the age -specific mortality rates listed in one year were kept constant over the next 115 years.
