Consistent with pre-pandemic trends, some communities of color faced higher premature death rates during the pandemic than their White counterparts. ![]() While the pandemic has had devastating effects across all racial and ethnic groups, we find significant racial disparities in premature death during the pandemic. ![]() The social and economic forces driving disparities during the pandemic are likely related to the lower life expectancy as well. Using the same age limit across groups avoids incorporating pre-existing disparities. American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) people had a lower average life expectancy before the pandemic than this age limit. Using age 75 as a uniform benchmark is comparable to how OECD presents international comparisons of premature mortality. Here, we look at years of life lost due to all causes from March 2020 through the end of 2022. While most of the excess deaths during the pandemic have been due to COVID-19, deaths from drug overdose, suicide, heart disease, and liver disease also increased during this period. Excess deaths are those above CDC’s estimate of expected count based on pre-pandemic mortality averages. We also look at the number of years of life lost before age 75, basing this part of the analysis on excess mortality data from March 2020 through December 2022 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For the premature mortality rate, we calculate the all-cause, age-specific mortality rate for people under age 75 using weekly counts of death from 2015 to 2022. Before the pandemic, most racial and ethnic groups had life expectancies of about 75 years or longer, although American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) people had a life expectancy of 71.8 years. This approach, discussed more in the Methods section, provides a uniform measure of the extent of premature death during the pandemic, although in a sense every death due to COVID-19 has been premature. We count premature deaths as deaths that occurred before the person had reached age 75. In this brief, we examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by race and ethnicity through the lens of premature mortality, using the measures of premature mortality rate and years of life lost among excess deaths that occurred during the pandemic. Another measure, years of life lost (derived from counts of deaths at each age that were in excess of deaths observed in typical years), measures the degree of prematurity of deaths during the pandemic. ![]() One can also look at the premature mortality rate or the rate of death below a certain age. As a measure of the impact of the pandemic, mortality rates alone do not tell the full story as they do not incorporate the age at death. And, while much attention has been paid to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on people of color, it also is important to consider the prematurity of these deaths. Although older adults have been at the highest risk of becoming seriously ill and dying from COVID-19, many younger people have had their lives cut short by the illness.
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