Abstract

Between February 2020 and May 2022, one million Americans have died of COVID-19. To determine the contribution of those deaths to all-cause mortality in terms of life expectancy reductions and the resulting economic welfare losses, we calculated their combined impact on national income growth and the added value of lives lost. We estimated that US life expectancy at birth dropped by 3.08 years due to the million COVID-19 deaths. Economic welfare losses estimated in terms of national income growth supplemented by the value of lives lost, was in the order of US$3.57 trillion. US$2.20 trillion of these losses were in in the non-Hispanic White population (56.50%), US$698.24 billion (19.54%) in the Hispanic population, and US$579.93 billion (16.23%) in the non-Hispanic Black population. The scale of life expectancy and welfare losses underscores the pressing need to invest in health in the US to prevent further economic shocks from future pandemic threats.

Details

Title
Assessing the impact of one million COVID-19 deaths in America: economic and life expectancy losses
Author
Silva, Sachin 1 ; Goosby, Eric 2 ; Reid, Michael J. A. 2 

 Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, USA (GRID:grid.38142.3c) (ISNI:000000041936754X); Institute for Global Health Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, USA (GRID:grid.266102.1) (ISNI:0000 0001 2297 6811) 
 Institute for Global Health Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, USA (GRID:grid.266102.1) (ISNI:0000 0001 2297 6811); University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, San Francisco, USA (GRID:grid.266102.1) (ISNI:0000 0001 2297 6811) 
Pages
3065
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2778815804
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2023. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.