Timely, high-quality mortality data have allowed for assessments of the
impact of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on life expectancies in
upper-middle- and high-income countries. Extant data, though imperfect, suggest
that the bulk of the pandemic-induced mortality might have occurred elsewhere.
This article reports on changes in life expectancies around the world as far as
they can be estimated from the evidence available at the end of 2021. The global
life expectancy appears to have declined by 0.92 years between 2019 and 2020 and
by another 0.72 years between 2020 and 2021, but the decline seems to have ended
during the last quarter of 2021. Uncertainty about its exact size aside, this
represents the first decline in global life expectancy since 1950, the first
year for which a global estimate is available from the United Nations. Annual
declines in life expectancy (from a 12-month period to the next) appear to have
exceeded two years at some point before the end of 2021 in at least 50
countries. Since 1950, annual declines of that magnitude had only been observed
on rare occasions, such as Cambodia in the 1970s, Rwanda in the 1990s, and
possibly some sub-Saharan African nations at the peak of the acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic.