During the two years of the pandemic, the average life expectancy of Poles decreased by about two years - data published by the Central Statistical Office confirm. COVID-19 and the high mortality rate for several months of the pandemic brought us back in terms of average life expectancy to the level of the beginning of the 21st century.
GUS: The pandemic increases pensions and shortens the life expectancy of Poles
Published March 29, 2022 08:04
Every year, at the end of March, the President of the CSO publishes a statement containing a table with the life expectancy of men and women expressed in months. The life expectancy tables published on March 28, which cover people aged 30 to 90, are taken into account when calculating retirement benefits.
According to the new tables, the average life expectancy decreased in the last year by 8.8 months for 60-year-olds (this is the retirement age for women) and 8.1 months for 65-year-olds (at this age, most men acquire retirement rights ). Therefore, pensions granted from April 2022 to March 2023 will be higher by several percent - and this is the only positive information from the GUS announcement. The benefits of women will increase by 3.7%, and for men - by 4.1%.
However, if you compare the table from March 2022 with the one from two years ago - the regression in life expectancy is even greater. The difference for 30-year-olds is over 26 months, for 60-year-olds over 22 months, and for 65-year-olds over 21 months. - As a result of excess deaths in terms of life expectancy, we have moved back to the levels of 2003 - commented the GUS publication on Twitter Łukasz Kozłowski, chief economist of the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs and member of the supervisory board of the Social Insurance Institution.
The data from a year ago only included the fall wave of 2020 which saw a huge spike in deaths - but that was "only" three months. Meanwhile, 2021 turned out to be a whole demographic tsunami: the deaths from COVID-19 were overlapped with the high total mortality (COVID-19 was responsible for some of the excess deaths, but not all). The number of deaths was the highest since World War II - 519,000 people died, several tens of thousands more than in the first year of the pandemic.
