In just one year of war, the life expectancy in the Gaza strip collapsed over 30 years. According to a study published on The Lancetit went from 75.5 to 40.6 years: a 46%reduction. For comparison, in Italy today life expectancy is over 83 years. Another study, conducted by researchers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Researchestimates that the loss in the first whole year of conflict can even reach 47 years old. Gaza is today one of the places with the lowest life expectancy in the world and, according to UNICEF, the most lethal for children.
Measuring the demographic consequences in the Gaza strip is extremely complex. The more solid estimates published today They refer to the period between October 2023 and 2024, and do not take into account the most recent developments: it is therefore probable, according to the authors, that the situation is even more serious.
Methods and data used by the sources of the study on life expectancy in Gaza
There are several research groups that are facing the difficult problem of the estimate of the reduction of life expectancy in the Gaza Strip. The study published on The Lancet last January from Guillot and colleaguescombines the data of the deaths reported by Ministry of Health of Gaza With those collected in the years preceding the war to estimate excess mortality due to the conflict and calculate the reduction of life expectancy. The authors clarify that their approach is conservativebecause it does not take into account the indirect effects of the war, such as the collapse of the health system and malnutrition. Consequentially, Real losses may be even higher.
The work of the researchers of the Max Plank Innsitute for Demographic Research developed by Gomez-Urarte et al. Use a complex method of indirect esteem. Starting from the data on the weekly deaths reported by Ministry of the Interior of the Strip, The models on pre -war data and test plausible scenarios for the period between 2023 and 2024 calibes. Both studies use the estimates of the population that lives in the strip calculated by the UN through the Unwra, that is, the United Nations Agency for the rescue and occupation of Palestinian refugees in the Near East.
The results of the two research, while using different data and methods, converge in very similar estimates of the effects of the first year of conflict on demographic conditions in the Gaza Strip.
The effect of war on life expectancy in Gaza
If the living conditions remain anchored to today, in Italy a male child who was born today would live on average 81.4 years, a female 85.5. In Gaza – even before the conflict – this figure was considerably lower: the life expectancy of men was around 75 years old (and more or less equal women). With the data collected during the first year of conflict, according to estimates published on The Lancet, Life expectancy has fallen at about 40 years.
It is one of the highest lifestyle reductions in life ever found in history. If we take into consideration the pandemic period of 2020/21, the reduction of life expectancy in Italy due to Covid-19 was 1.2 years. If we look at the most affected areas, for example the province of Bergamo we reach 4 years.
If we move instead to the wars that involved our country, before entering the second world conflict, life expectancy in Italy was about 57 years old, and then went down to 49 years in 1943 (and 52 in 1944). So, we record between 7 and 8 years lost, and in particular for men the reduction increases to 13 years. We are talking about a 22% reduction in Italy due to the Second World War.
We must return to the period of the First World War, moreover joint to the Pandemic influence, to find in Italy a similar reduction in the life expectancy at birth, at least in relative terms, to that in the Gaza Strip.
The consequences on the future
Even if the conflict ended now, the long -term damage of the war would also be felt for the years to come, having this conflict considerably involved children. According to the most recent estimates, calculated by Schlüter et al. and published last March in the scientific journal Population Health Metrics, Over 8,000 minors were killed in the first year of war. Infant mortality in the Gaza strip exceeded 100 deaths every 1,000 living born, the highest figure in the world. And, moreover, about 15,000 children lost their father, while almost 10,000 lost their mother.
In this regard, an interesting contribution of two researchers, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez and Enrique Acosta, published on The Conversationgoes beyond the sad account of the deaths, and tries to quantify the losses in a wider way.
According to their calculations, every death in war in the Gaza strip between 2023 and 2024 produced on average 1.7 parents and 1.9 children in mourning. The result is that 1 in 43 Palestinian lost a son and 1 out of 59 lost a parent because of the conflict. Unfortunately these estimates are firm to the first months of the conflict, since at the moment it is difficult to find consistent data.
The authors estimate that, even in a hypothetical scenario of ceased the immediate fire, they would serve fifty years of uninterrupted peace to bring the “mourning level” back to the Palestinian population to a value similar to the pre-conflict value. Previous studies show that people affected by mourning of war are more exposed to post-traumatic stress disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts and physical health problems, especially when they die or children or children who guarantee support, care or protection.
