Life expectancy in Germany fell during the corona pandemic. Compared to the last year before the pandemic, 2019, the average life expectancy at birth in 2022 fell by 0.6 years for both men and women, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. For women it was 82.9 years and for men 78.2 years.
There was a further decline of 0.2 years for women last year compared to 2021, while life expectancy at birth for men in 2022 remained almost constant compared to the previous year.
Life expectancy in East Germany is increasing
In East Germany, however, life expectancy at birth rose again in 2022 after sharp declines in the two previous years, as the Federal Statistical Office further announced. The increase was 0.2 years for women and 0.6 years for men compared to 2021. Compared to 2019, life expectancy at birth in eastern Germany is 0.7 years lower for women and 0.8 years lower for men, despite the most recent increase in 2022.
In western Germany, however, life expectancy continued to decline in 2022. The difference to 2019 is still smaller in the western German federal states over the entire period than in eastern Germany and in 2022 – as in Germany as a whole – was 0.6 years for both sexes.
Heat and influenza are also having an impact
Measures and changes in behavior in the course of the pandemic could have ensured that fewer deaths were caused by other infectious diseases such as the flu, especially in 2020 and 2021, said the Federal Statistical Office. In 2022, the exceptionally warm summer and a strong flu epidemic at the end of the year would have had a visible effect on the number of deaths over the year.
According to the statisticians, the number of deaths before the pandemic had increased by about one to two percent annually. In each of the three years of the pandemic, the annual increases exceeded this level. From 2020 to 2022 there were a total of around 140,000 to 200,000 additional deaths.
The statistical variable “life expectancy at birth” is not a prognosis for newborns today, as the Federal Office emphasized. The number summarizes the mortality across all age years in one value. The result is independent of the age structure and the size of the population and is therefore particularly well suited for comparisons over time, according to the office.
mws/gri (epd, afp, dpa)
Source: DW
