Chennai: The Covid-19 pandemic, which has affected the lives of people worldwide, has also caused a drop in the life expectancy in India by almost two years, a statistical analysis by scientists of the city-based International Institute for Population Studies (IIPS) has revealed.
The study published on Thursday in BMC Public Health, a peer-reviewed journal, also highlighted that the age-wise mortality disruptions caused by the pandemic impacted more men than women.
‘The inequality in the deaths by age groups was higher in men,’ said Suryakant Yadav from IIPS, who co-authored the paper along with Pawan Kumar Yadav from IIPS and Neha Yadav from JNU. ‘It could be because men were exposed more to the external factors compared to women,’ he said.
‘Life expectancy at birth’ is defined as the average number of years that a newborn is expected to live if the mortality pattern during their birth remains constant in the future.
The study was conducted to analyse the effect of the Covid pandemic on the mortality patterns across the country, as thousands of lives were lost due to the deadly pandemic waves.
‘The 35-79 age group had excess deaths caused by Covid-19 in 2020 as compared to normal years and it is this group that has contributed immensely to the drop,’ Yadav said.