Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on life expectancy at birth in Asia

Objective To investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on life expectancy at birth ( e 0 ) for 51 Asian countries and territories from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021. Method Based on age-sex-specific mortality used for estimating the changes in e 0 for years 2019, 2020, and 2021 from the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects, we employed Arriaga’s discrete method to decompose changes in e 0 into both absolute and relative contributions of changes in age-specific death rate, and further obtained the age-sex-specific contribution to changes in e 0 by country/territory and period (i.e., 2019–2020 and 2020–2021) for Asia. Findings The COVID-19 pandemic reduced 1.66 years in e 0 of the Asian population from 2019 to 2021, slightly lower than the world average of 1.74 years. South Asia had a high loss of 3.01 years, whereas Eastern Asia had almost no changes. Oman, Lebanon, India, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, and the Philippines experienced a high loss of above 2.5 years in e 0 . Despite significant national and territorial variations, the decline of e 0 in Asia was mostly from the age group of 60–79 years, followed by age groups of 80 + and 45–59 years; and age groups of children contributed little (i.e., 0–4 and 5–14 years old). Males suffered more losses than females in this pandemic. Asian nations saw less loss in e 0 in the second year of the pandemic, i.e., 2020–2021, than in the first year, i.e., 2019–2020, but this recovery trend was not observed in Southern Asia and South-Eastern Asia. Countries from Central Asia and Western Asia, such as Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, and Oman, had extraordinarily more losses in e 0 in the first year at ages around 70. Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic had significantly affected e 0 of Asian populations, and most contribution to the reduction of e 0 came from the three older age groups, 60–79 years, 80 + years, and 45–59 years, with great variations across countries/territories. Our findings could have important implications for development of more resilient public health systems in Asian societies with better policy interventions for vulnerable demographic groups.