India sees large shift in life expectancy inequalities

Residents watch as supporters of India’s opposition coalition stage a campaign rally in Tamil Nadu state’s Madurai – Copyright AFP Idrees MOHAMMED

A new study finds that life expectancy in India was 2.6 years lower in 2020 than 2019, with women and marginalised social groups suffering the greatest declines.

The international study, co-authored by the Department of Sociology and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science’sDr Aashish Gupta and Professor Ridhi Kashyap, finds that life expectancy in India suffered large and unequal declines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, mortality across India was 17 percent higher in 2020 compared to 2019, indicating 1.19 million excess deaths in India. This extrapolated estimate is about eight times higher than the official number of COVID-19 deaths in India, and 1.5 times higher than the World Health Organization’s estimates.

Professor Kashyap said, in relation to the report: “Our findings challenge the view that 2020 was not significant in terms of the mortality impacts and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. While a mortality surge caused by the Delta variant in 2021 received more attention, our study reveals significant and unequal mortality increases even earlier on in the pandemic.”

Using data from 765,180 individuals, the study estimated changes in life expectancy at birth, by sex and social group between 2019 and 2020 in India.

The study discovered large mortality impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 on younger age groups, women, and marginalised social groups. Generally, marginalised social groups within India experienced greater life expectancy declines than the most privileged social groups. 

These marginalised groups already had lower life expectancy, and the pandemic appears to have further increased the gap between the most privileged Indian social groups, and the most marginalised social groups in India.

The study also indicated larger losses among females compared to males among almost all Indian social groups and classes. Women in India experienced life expectancy declines of 3.1 years – one year more than men who experienced life expectancy losses of 2.1 years.

This pattern relates to gender inequalities in healthcare and the allocation of resources within households. The findings also contrast with the pattern found in high-income countries where excess mortality was higher among men than women during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While life expectancy declines in high-income countries were primarily driven by mortality increases in over 60s, mortality increased in almost all age groups in India and most prominently in the youngest and older age groups.

The research highlights the importance of focussing on inequality when measuring mortality and shows that pandemics can worsen, rather than equalise, existing disparities.

The research is titled ‘Large and unequal life expectancy declines during the COVID-19 pandemic in India in 2020, can it appears in the journal Science Advances.