The Covid-19 pandemic may have shortened older Americans' lives enough to throw off mortality forecasts for life insurance, annuity, and pension providers.

An arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reporting, based on early data, that overall life expectancy at birth dropped by 1.5 years between 2019 and 2020, to 77.3 years. For U.S. residents who are currently 65 years old, life expectancy fell by 0.8 years, to 18.8 additional years. The drop at age 65 was about the same for men and women.

This means that the average person who turned 65 in the United States last year might have a lifespan that's about 4 percent shorter than the lifespan of someone who turned 65 in 2019.

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Allison Bell

Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.

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