A Harvard Pop Center working paper by Mary Bassett, MD, MPH, Jarvis Chen, ScD, and Nancy Krieger, PhD, exposes the “magnitude of mortality inequities” across multiple racial and ethnic groups by analyzing age-specific mortality rates. While COVID-19 mortality rates were higher for racial and ethnic minorities at all ages, the rate for those ages 25-54 was 7-9 times higher when compared to the non-Hispanic white population.
According to the authors, “As a consequence, more years of potential life lost were experienced by African Americans and Latinos than whites, although the white population is 3-4 fold larger.”