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.
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.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.