(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Chicago officials report life expectancy during the first year of the pandemic dropped almost two years compared to the year before, with the sharpest drops among Black and Latino people.
The overall life expectancy of a Chicagoan in 2020 was 75.4 years, public health officials said. Just the year before, the overall life expectancy was almost two years higher — 77.3 years.
City officials said COVID-19 was a significant reason for the change, but the virus was only the second leading cause of death among Chicagoans in 2020 behind heart disease.
There were also increases in deaths from chronic diseases such as diabetes, and the city saw more fatal car crashes, drug overdoses and murders.
The highest life expectancy in Chicago in 2020 — at 82 years — was the Hyde Park neighborhood, but that’s still more than a half a year less than 2019.
According to the Chicago Health Atlas, the lowest life expectancy in the city was in the East Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side, at 66.1 years. That was a drop of more than a year and a half.
The South Deering neighborhood on the Southeast Side saw a nearly four-year drop in life expectancy in that one year, from 74 years to 70.1.
City officials said the gap in life expectancy between Black and white Chicagoans was 10 years, up from 8.8 in 2017. And for the first time in decades, the average life expectancy of Black residents in the city dropped below 70 years old.
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