The Gender Gap in Rates of Death During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

A new report from the United States Census Bureau presents data on death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data shows that in 2019 before the onset of the pandemic, 1,381,015 women died in the United States. In 2020, when the pandemic took hold, 1,613,845 women died. This was an increase of 16.9 percent.

In contrast, the number of deaths for the population as a whole increased by 18.5 percent from 2019 to 2020. The number of death for men in the United States in 2020 increased by 20.1 percent compared to the year before.

In 2021, when vaccines became widely available, the number of women deaths increased by 0.8 percent from the previous year. But the number of deaths among male Americans rose by 3.9 percent. In 2022, the number of deaths for both men and women declined.

Males have historically had higher deaths than females and for most of the last decade, the gap between the two sexes had been growing prior to the pandemic. In 2012, for example, 50.1 percent of deaths were male. By 2020, the share had increased to 51.6 percent. In 2021, 53.1 of those Americans who died were male.