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Luxembourg (dpa) - Average life expectancy fell in almost all EU countries in the first year of the corona pandemic.
22 of the 27 countries recorded a year-on-year decline in 2020, as reported by the EU statistical office Eurostat in Luxembourg.
Spain (minus 1.6 years) and Bulgaria (1.5 years) were hardest hit.
In Germany, life expectancy at birth fell by 0.2 years to 81.1 years.
Life expectancy at a certain point in time is the number of years that a person still has to live on average if the conditions of death prevailing at that point in time continued to apply.
In other words: Children born in Germany in 2020 will live on average 81.1 years old - in the theoretical case that the entire time will die the same as in 2020. According to Eurostat, the figures given for 2020 are preliminary estimates for life expectancy at birth.
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In the long term, EU citizens are actually getting older: According to Eurostat, average life expectancy has increased by an average of more than two years per decade since the 1960s.
In recent years, however, this development has stagnated or even declined in several countries.
After the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic, life expectancy finally fell in 2020 in the vast majority of states.
In the USA, too, life expectancy fell from 78.8 to 77.8 years in the first half of 2020 - the lowest value since 2006.
There is still a strong gap within the EU: Malta's residents are the oldest at 82.6 years.
This is followed by Sweden, Italy and Spain (each 82.4 years).
Life expectancy is lowest in Lithuania (75.1), Romania (74.2) and Bulgaria (73.6).
In 2019, life expectancy across the EU was 81.3 years.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210407-99-116344 / 3
Eurostat press release
Life expectancy statistics in the EU
Definition of life expectancy