Life Expectancy In CA Decreases With COVID-19 Deaths

CALIFORNIA — The life expectancy for the average American fell by nearly three years between 2019 and 2021 — the sharpest two-year decline in nearly a century, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wednesday. Though the average life expectancy in the Golden State remains among the highest in the country, the pandemic still took a toll on California’s life expectancy, the data shows.

Nationwide, the average American’s life expectancy fell from nearly 79 years in 2019 to 76 years in 2021. The CDC report — Provisional Life Expectancy For 2021 — did not include a state-by-state breakdown for 2021.

However, data for 2020 shows how dramatic the decline already was for California just one year into the pandemic. In California, the life expectancy dropped in 2020 to 79 — a full 1.9 years lower than in 2019, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics.

In 2020, the national life expectancy dropped to 77 years, down from 78.8 in 2019. No state saw an increase in life expectancy in 2020.

COVID-19 is behind the largest spike in mortality in 100 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In California, 94,239 people have died of COVID-19 illnesses, according to the state’s Covid dashboard.

Hispanic, Blacks and Native Americans — minority groups that traditionally have lower life expectancies than whites and Asian Americans were particularly hit hard by the pandemic, the data shows, further exacerbating the racial life expectancy gap in the United States.

In eight states — New York, Louisiana, New Jersey, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, Illinois and Texas — and the District of Columbia, life expectancy fell by more than two years. In New York, life expectancy was cut by three years.

Several states saw life expectancy decrease by less than a year, including Hawaii, where COVID-19 shaved only two months off a person’s life. Other states in that group were New Hampshire (four months), Maine (five months), and Washington and Oregon (both eight months).

The states with the highest life expectancy in 2020 are Hawaii (80.7 years), Washington (79.2 years), Minnesota (79.1 years), and California, Massachusetts and New Hampshire (79 years).

The states with the lowest life expectancy in 2020 are from Southern states, including Mississippi (71.9 years), West Virginia (72.8 years), Louisiana (73.1 years), Alabama (73.2 years) and Kentucky (73.5 years).

Dr. Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics, told NBC News he expected life expectancy to continue to decline in 2021 because COVID-19 deaths continued to increase that year.

“We really haven’t really seen anything like this since the 1918 flu pandemic,” he told the network.

After the flu outbreak, the average life expectancy fell from 50.9 years in 1917 to 39.1 years in 1918, he said.