For children who were born in Germany in the past year, the average life expectancy has fallen. The reason is the exceptionally high number of deaths during the corona waves. For newborn girls, life expectancy fell by 0.4 years to 83.2 years, for boys by 0.6 years to 78.2 years, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Tuesday in Wiesbaden.
According to the statisticians, life expectancy indicates changes in mortality that are independent of age structure. This number is therefore particularly well suited for time comparisons.
In the second corona wave, eastern Germany was particularly affected by the pandemic. Therefore, the decline in life expectancy was particularly evident here. From 2019 - the year before the pandemic - to 2021, life expectancy for boys there decreased by 1.3 years and for girls by 0.9 years.
Life expectancy at birth is 76.4 years for East German boys and 82.7 years for East German girls. The statistical life expectancy of West German boys was 78.6 years, statistically more than two years higher. For West German girls, it fell by 0.3 years to 83.3 years.
According to the statisticians, Corona also led to a significant increase in deaths. In the years before the pandemic, the number of deaths rose by one to two percent per year due to the aging of society, and in 2020 there was an increase of five percent to 986,000 deaths. Comparing the years 2019 and 2021, there was even a nine percent increase in deaths to 1.02 million.
However, the number of additional deaths of around 70,000 to 100,000 in 2020 and 2021 was below the almost 115,000 corona deaths reported by the Robert Koch Institute. According to the Federal Statistical Office, this could be due to the fact that there were fewer deaths from other infectious diseases such as the flu as a result of the protective measures and changes in behavior.
