COVID Stripped 3 Years from California Life Expectancy

The gap between the state's wealthiest and poorest widened by an additional four years over the two-year span.

Life expectancy in California fell by more than three years during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, with lower-income people and communities of color suffering disproportionately, new research shows.

In the study, published this month in JAMA Network, Northwestern University and UCLA researchers looked at nearly 2 million deaths in California between 2015 and 2021 and found that life expectancy shortened from 81.40 years in 2019 to 79.20 years in 2020, and 78.37 years in 2021.

The life expectancy gap between the state's wealthiest ($232,261 mean household income) and poorest ($21 279 MHI) widened by an additional four years over the two-year span, growing from 11.52 years in 2019 to 14.67 years in 2020 and 15.51 years in 2021, while life expectancy for the richest 1% dropped less than one year, the study found.  

"Families of lower socioeconomic status are more vulnerable to economic instability and were less likely to access income support programs during the pandemic," the study says, "raising concerns that the stresses brought on by the pandemic might have widened health gaps related to income and race and ethnicity."

Study co-author and Northwestern University Prof. Hannes Schwandt, PhD, says he was "shocked by how big the differences were, and the degree of inequality that they reflected."

"We've had indications that the pandemic affected economically disadvantaged people more strongly, but we never really had numbers on actual life expectancy loss across the income spectrum," he says.

Communities of color were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with life expectancy declining 5.74 years among Hispanics, 3.04 years among the non-Hispanic Asians, 3.84 years among the non-Hispanic Blacks, and 1.9 years among the non-Hispanic Whites.

"The disproportionately large decreases in life expectancy among Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black populations reflect their exposure to higher COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death rates, especially early in the pandemic," the study notes. "This disparity, much like other racial and ethnic inequities, has roots in the social determinants of health as well as structural barriers resulting from systemic racism that have helped perpetuate disparities for generations."

"In the case of COVID-19, Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black populations were more likely to rely on jobs (often as frontline workers), transportation, and housing conditions that heightened viral exposure and to encounter barriers to healthcare, a higher prevalence of comorbid conditions, and socioeconomic challenges that jeopardized their health."