Schwerin/Wiesbaden (dpa/mv) – As in other federal states, the average life expectancy in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania fell during the corona pandemic. According to the latest data in a country comparison, the decline in the Northeast was in the middle. “In the analysis between 2019 and 2021, the southern regions of eastern Germany have recorded the strongest declines,” said Markus Sauerberg from the Federal Institute for Population Research on Wednesday in Wiesbaden.
The data for life expectancy refer to the people born in the corresponding year. Life expectancy is calculated as the average length of life they would live if the age-specific mortality rates recorded in one year were held constant over the next 115 years.
According to the calculations of the experts, the average life expectancy of newborn boys in the north-east in 2021 was around 0.6 years lower than before the pandemic, and for newborn girls just under 0.5. In the federal states of Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia, which were particularly affected by corona waves, the average life expectancy for newborn boys was around one and a half years lower and for newborn girls just over a year.
Schleswig-Holstein is at the other end of the scale. According to the information, life expectancy there increased by 0.2 years between 2019 and 2021 for newborn boys, while there was a comparatively small decrease in the forecasts for newborn girls with a minus of 0.2.
Across Germany, life expectancy fell by 0.2 years to 78.49 years for boys and to 83.36 years for girls during the first Corona year 2020, as the calculations show. When the alpha and delta variants dominated in 2021, it fell by a further 0.4 years in boys and by 0.3 years in girls. Before the start of the pandemic, life expectancy in Germany had increased by around 0.1 year per year.
According to the experts, a falling life expectancy of more than one year is very unusual outside of wartime. “Reductions of this magnitude were last recorded at the end of the GDR,” explained the research director at the Federal Institute, Sebastian Klüsener. The strong regional differences can be explained, among other things, with the infection situation, the corona measures taken and the behavior of the population. The proximity to severely affected neighboring countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland also plays a role.
