Covid-19 deaths drag down Hong Kong life expectancy, but population experts say no cause for alarm
- Hong Kong loses top spot for longevity to Japan in 2022, but experts expect it to climb back up again
- Total deaths rose sharply in 2022, including high number who succumbed to Covid-19 during city’s fifth wave
They said a sudden rise in the death rate and a fall in life expectancy in 2022 was likely to have been a one-off impact of the pandemic.
“The number of deaths was so much higher in 2022,” said Professor Stuart Gietel-Basten, a population policy scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “That shows us that Covid was a big deal.”
Hongkongers’ life expectancy at birth fell in 2022 compared with 2021, sliding from 83.2 years to 80.7 for men and from 87.9 to 86.8 for women, according to the latest government data.
Japan overtook Hong Kong for expected lifespans of both men and women for the first time since 2011, recording 81.1 years for men and 87.1 for women in 2022.
Government data released earlier this month showed that Hong Kong’s standardised death rate, which is the number of deaths per 1,000 people, rose from 6.9 in 2021 to 8.4 in 2022 after being on a downward trend for three decades.
Gietel-Basten said the change was because of the deaths during the peak of the pandemic in 2022.
