Coronavirus: Singapore’s life expectancy falls for first time on record due to Covid-19 deaths

There were 2,490 excess deaths in Singapore from January 2020 to June 2022, of which almost 60 per cent were directly caused by Covid-19

Life expectancy at birth was 83.5 years in 2021, a drop of around two months compared with 83.7 years in 2019, data showed

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Published: 11:47am, 10 Oct 2022Updated: 5:46am, 11 Oct 2022

Singapore’s life expectancy fell for the first time on record, driven by higher mortality rates from Covid-19, which was the fifth most common cause of death in the city state last year.

Life expectancy at birth was 83.5 years in 2021, a drop of around two months compared with 83.7 years in 2019, data from the Department of Statistics showed. Life expectancy for women was 85.9 years, and 81.1 years for men, the data showed.

It’s the first time life expectancy has fallen since records were first kept in 1957, the department said.

The drop mirrors a trend seen in the US, where life expectancy suffered its largest two-year decline in a century as Covid-19 and the epidemic of opioid overdoses took their toll on the population. Overall life expectancy at birth in the US declined by almost 3 years from 2019 to 2021 to 76.1 years

A spokesperson for Singapore’s statistics department said higher mortality rates caused by excess deaths during the pandemic had caused life expectancy to fall in 2020 and 2021, the Straits Times newspaper reported.

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