The average life expectancy in Taiwan last year fell sharply for a second consecutive year, to its lowest level since 2014, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) said yesterday.
Average life expectancy last year was 79.84 years, down 1.02 years from 80.86 years in 2021 and down 1.48 years from Taiwan’s historical high life expectancy of 81.32 years in 2020, the ministry said in a statement.
The previous biggest change in life expectancy in Taiwan over the past 32 years for which the ministry’s data have been available came in 1997, when it went up 0.59 years.
Photo: CNA
The big decline caused in large part by the COVID-19 outbreak in Taiwan that officially cost 14,667 people their lives last year, becoming the third-biggest cause of death behind cancer and heart diseases.
The MOI said total deaths in Taiwan last year rose to 208,129, an increase of 23,672 from the previous year, resulting in a 9.5 percent rise in the standardized mortality ratio (SMR), a life expectancy metric that adjusts for the age structure of a population.
An SMR higher than 1 means that more deaths occurred than would have been expected based on the age distribution of Taiwan’s population, a sign of the high excess deaths, especially from COVID-19, in the population last year.
The average life expectancy for men and women was estimated at 76.63 years and 83.28 years respectively, down 1.04 years and 0.97 years from the previous year, the ministry said.
The men’s figure was the lowest since hitting 76.43 in 2012 and the women’s was the lowest since hitting 83.19 in 2014.
Although Taiwan’s life expectancy fell for a second straight year, the nation still has a higher life expectancy than the world average, when compared with the latest information released by the UN in 2020, the ministry said.
Taipei had the highest average life expectancy last year across the six major municipalities at 83.75 years, followed by New Taipei City’s 81.32, Taoyuan’s 81.04, Taichung’s 80.82, Tainan’s 80.14 and Kaohsiung’s 79.67, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, Taitung County had the lowest life expectancy of any of the nation’s 22 regions at 76.46 years.
The aging population also contributed to the fall in overall life expectancy, as the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the number of unhealthy life years by causing more deaths, Ministry of Health and Welfare Department of Statistics Lee Chiu-yen (李秋嬿) said.
It early next year plans to release unhealthy life years expectancy data for last year, the agency said.
Additional reporting by Wu Liang-yi
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