Sharon Zhang
Truthout / February 14, 2025
Researchers said this estimate is conservative, as it doesn’t include deaths to factors like starvation and disease.
The life expectancy of Palestinians in Gaza was slashed nearly in half amid the first year of Israel’s genocide, a new study finds, taking decades off of the average life of a person in the besieged enclave.
An article published online in The Lancet finds that life expectancy across the population dropped by 34.9 years between October 2023 and September 2024, going from 75.5 years before the genocide to 40.5 years.
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Findings
21 953 (63·9%) of 34 344 individuals in the GHM list of killed individuals (and 19 744 [64·4%] of 30 673 excluding those who were not yet born at the time of the 2017 census) were matched with individuals included in the UNRWA refugee register. This proportion is similar to the proportion of registered refugees in the 2017 census (65·7%), providing additional evidence regarding the reliability of the GHM data. In the central variant, life expectancy in the Gaza Strip decreased by 34·9 years during the first 12 months of the war, about half (–46·3%) the prewar level of 75·5 years. Life expectancy losses were larger for males (–38·0 years [–51·6%]) than for females, but nonetheless, females also suffered large losses (–29·9 years [–38·6%]). Losses between the low and high variants ranged between –31·1 years (–41·1%) and –39·4 years (–52·2%) for both sexes combined.
Interpretation
Our approach to estimating life expectancy losses in this study is conservative as it ignores the indirect effect of the war on mortality. Even ignoring this indirect effect, results show that the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip generated a life expectancy loss of more than 30 years during the first 12 months of the war, nearly halving prewar levels. Actual losses are likely to be higher.
Source: Life expectancy losses in the Gaza Strip during the period October, 2023, to September, 2024 ; The Lancet, February 8, 2025
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This is a decrease of 46 percent, or about half of the pre-genocide life expectancy, the study found.
Losses were greater for men, who lost 38 years in life expectancy on average, while women lost 30 years.
These estimates are conservative, study authors said. They noted that they could not account for deaths due to “indirect” effects of Israel’s war on Gaza, like starvation and disease, in their calculations, meaning that the life expectancy may have dropped even lower than their estimates.
Further, the 40.5 expectancy estimate does not account for people missing and presumed dead under the rubble due to the lack of an accurate death toll. Palestinian officials have estimated that there are over 14,000 people whose bodies are trapped under rubble as a result of Israel’s bombing campaign.
If estimates of those missing under the rubble are counted, the study found, the life expectancy drops to 36.1 years.
If researchers only count the deaths of people for whom they have complete identifying information and were logged in the UN records as of August 2024 — 21,953 deaths — the average life expectancy rises to 44.4 years.
However, it has long been said by experts that even the official toll, which includes deaths without all identifying information, is far lower than the true count; one Lancet article published last month, for instance, found that the number of deaths due to traumatic injury alone is likely at least over 64,000. And a Lancet letter last summer estimated that the true death toll could be 186,000 or more when accounting for “indirect” deaths due to Israel’s blockade.
“It is highly likely that our central estimates underestimate true losses, because they do not include individuals reported missing or under the rubble,” the study on life expectancy says.
The study was conducted using data from the Gaza Ministry of Health as well as data from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, a Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics official, and UN officials authored the article.
If the findings are accurate, this means that the life expectancy of Palestinians in Gaza amid the genocide fell below that of the countries with the lowest life expectancies of the world, with Chad and Lesotho having the lowest expectancy of 53 years.
By contrast, the last time that the U.S. life expectancy at birth for the average American was close to 40 was during the height of the Spanish flu pandemic, on the heels of World War I, and before that, pre-Industrial Revolution.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labour
