The Failure of Life Expectancy to Fully Rebound to Prepandemic Levels

RESEARCH LETTER: The Failure of Life Expectancy to Fully Rebound to Prepandemic Levels Published in Journal of the American Medical Association, July 9, 2025.

POLICY BRIEF: Life expectancy in California still hasn’t rebounded to pre-pandemic levels

A new analysis in JAMA, from researchers at Northwestern University, Yale University, the California Policy Lab at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) reports new estimates of life expectancy from the state of California. The analysis finds that, in 2024, average life expectancy in the state still failed to return to pre-pandemic levels. The average life expectancy of Californians was 0.86 years lower than it was in 2019, with drug overdoses and cardiovascular disease overtaking Covid-19 as leading contributors to the reduction in years.

A 2022 analysis by the authors, also published in JAMA, showed how the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic affected life expectancy in California, finding that life expectancy declined from 81.40 years in 2019 to 79.20 years in 2020 and 78.37 years in 2021. That analysis also found the gap in life expectancy between those living in the highest income census tracts and the lowest income census tracts increased, from a difference of about 11 ½ years before the pandemic, to more than 15 years in 2021.