This is an artifact of the statistical model used to estimate the life expectancy. The model is called Lee-Carter [1], and it's basically a linear regression.

This is an artifact of the statistical model used to estimate the life expectancy. The model is called Lee-Carter [1], and it's basically a linear regression. The last 2 years were outliers in terms experienced mortality. Most likely mortality will not stay elevated in the years to come. But the model does not know this. It simply uses these years to estimate how the mortality will evolve. Now, one can say that some people will experience long covid, so their mortality rate will stay elevated for years to come. Fair, but that does not apply to people of age 0 (newborns), which is what this life expectancy number that's being reported is. For those people, the life expectancy will not be lower than before Covid, if anything it will be slightly higher (corresponding to 2 years of progress). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%E2%80%93Carter_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%E2%80%93Carter_model