Statistics Canada reports historic decrease in national life expectancy primarily linked to COVID-19 pandemic
As the COVID-19 epidemic continues to have a significant effect on Canadians' lives, Statistics Canada has been issuing and updating provisional death estimates monthly with the most recent data available as part of its commitment to keep Canadians informed about the pandemic's consequences. And the most current preliminary figures, which covered the period ending November 6, 2021, shows just how massive its impact has been.
According to the national statistical agency, life expectancy in Canada declined by more than half a year in 2020, marking the greatest single-year decline since the country initiated the vital statistics began in 1921.
On an annual basis, life expectancy in Canada was estimated at 81.7 years in 2020, down 0.6 years from the previous year (82.3 years). Males saw a higher drop (0.7 years) than females (0.4 years).
“In Canada, as in most other countries around the world, life expectancy tends to increase over time,” the national statistical agency said. “The decline observed from 2019 to 2020 is primarily linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, which started to hit the country in 2020.”
COVID-19 was estimated to be the third biggest cause of mortality in Canada in 2020 – following cancer and heart disease – with the loss of 16,151 Canadians being directly attributable to the outbreak that year. That included 8,350 fatalities among women and 7,801 among men.
Aside from deaths directly linked to COVID-19, the pandemic may have had unintended impacts that raised or lowered the number of fatalities in Canada. In 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic began, there were 307,205 deaths in Canada. Compared with 285,270 deaths in 2019, it marked an increase of 21,935 (+7.7%).
“Despite the observed decline, life expectancy in Canada in 2020 remained among the highest in the world,” Statistics Canada noted.
The pandemic has caused greater reductions in life expectancy in other countries; Spain, Italy, and the United States saw decreases in life expectancy at birth on the order of to 1.5 years. But life expectancy in several nations, such as Norway, Denmark, and Finland, remained unchanged or even increased in 2020.
The fall in average life expectancy in Canada was accompanied by an increase in death rates for most age categories.
Death rates among people aged 25 to 39 years were at their highest in over 20 years in 2020. Mortality rates for individuals under the age of 15 are lower than or equivalent to those seen in recent years. Canadians under the age of 40 were mostly untouched by the pandemic's direct consequences, with little over 50 fatalities linked to COVID-19 within this age range in 2020.
It was also consistently in the top ten primary causes of mortality among those over the age of 34, with the majority of those affected being over the age of 64. The vast majority of all COVID-19 fatalities in Canada (94.1%) occurred in people aged 65 and above, with over half (54.6%) happening in people over the age of 84.
COVID-19 was among the top five primary causes of mortality in Quebec (third), Manitoba (fourth), and Ontario (fifth).
