Life expectancy among Native Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic: estimates, uncertainty, and obstacles

Few reliable estimates have been available for assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality among Native Americans. Using deidentified publicly available data on deaths and populations by age, we estimated life expectancy for the years 2019-2022 for single-race non-Hispanic Native Americans. Life expectancy in 2022 was 67.8 years, 2.3 years higher than in 2021 but a huge 4-year loss from 2019. Although our life expectancy estimates for 2022 varied under different assumptions about racial/ethnic classification and age misreporting errors, all estimates were lower than the average for middle-income countries. Estimates of losses and gains in life expectancy were consistent across assumptions. Large reductions in COVID-19 death rates between 2021 and 2022 were largely offset by increases in rates of death from unintentional injuries (particularly drug overdoses), chronic liver disease, diabetes, and heart disease, underscoring the difficulties facing Native Americans in achieving reductions in mortality, let alone returning to levels of mortality prior to the pandemic. Serious data problems have persisted for many years, but the scarcity and inadequacy of estimates during the pandemic have underscored the urgent need for timely and accurate demographic data on the Native American population.