US-born and foreign-born life expectancy by race and Hispanic origin before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

Interdisciplinary health scholarship has long documented the lower mortality of the foreign-born compared to the US-born populations. In this study, we examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this migrant mortality advantage in 2020, 2021 and 2022 compared to 2017–2019 and estimate the contributions of the foreign-born population to US life expectancy by race and Hispanic Origin. In 2020, life expectancy declined more among all foreign-born subgroups than their US-born counterparts. The overall foreign-born life expectancy advantage declined by 1.0 year for women by 2.4 years for men and their contribution to US life expectancy declined by 0.13 years for women and 0.30 years for men. In 2021, mortality continued to increase among all US-born subgroups, but it declined among all foreign-born populations and their contributions to US life expectancy recovered their pre-pandemic size for women, but not for men. In 2022, both US-born and foreign-born life expectancies increased and the foreign-born contribution to US life expectancy exceeded its pre-pandemic size for women but not for men. At the same time, however, life expectancies for US-born and foreign-born men and women in 2022 remained below their level in 2017–2019. Among the foreign-born subgroups, Hispanic men experienced both the largest decline in life expectancy between 2017 and 2019 and 2020 and the slowest recovery by 2022. Overall, the U.S. experienced one of the largest life expectancy declines among high-income countries. This decline would have been even larger without the life expectancy gains of the foreign-born population in 2021 and 2022.