A new paper published in Science Advances today finds that life expectancy in India was 2.6 years lower in 2020 than 2019, with women and marginalised social groups suffering the greatest declines.
The international study, co-authored by the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science’s Dr Aashish Gupta and Professor Ridhi Kashyap, finds that mortality across India was 17% higher in 2020 compared to 2019, which equates to 1.19 million excess deaths – about eight times higher than India’s official number of COVID-19 deaths and 1.5 times higher than the World Health Organization’s estimates.
Using high-quality survey data from 765,180 individuals, the study estimated changes in life expectancy at birth, by sex and social group. Large mortality impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 were found on younger age groups, women, and marginalised social groups.
Dr Aashish Gupta, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science said, ‘Marginalised groups already had lower life expectancy, and the pandemic further increased the gap between the most privileged Indian social groups, and the most marginalised social groups in India’.
High caste Hindu groups experienced a life expectancy decline of 1.3 years but the loss for Muslims was 5.4 years and 4.1 years for Scheduled Tribes. Women in India also experienced life expectancy declines of 3.1 years – one year more than men who experienced losses of 2.1 years.
Ridhi Kashyap, Professor of Demography and Computational Social Science at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science said, ‘Using unique demographic and health survey data, our study highlights the importance of focussing on inequality when measuring mortality and shows that pandemics can worsen, rather than equalise, existing disparities. This was particularly noticeable on the role that COVID-19 had in further exacerbating the health impacts of pre-pandemic gender disparities.’
The study also found mortality increases in almost all age groups in India and most prominently in the youngest and older age groups.
The full paper, ‘Large and unequal life expectancy declines during the COVID-19 pandemic in India in 2020’, can be found in Science Advances.
Find out more in the University of Oxford news story.
