According to a study published by The Lancet, Life expectancy in Gaza plunged by nearly 50 per cent in the first year of the Israeli genocide in the besieged enclave, reaching a value of 40·5 years for both sexes.
The study, led by Michel Guillot, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts & Sciences, found that life expectancy in Gaza fell by a staggering 34.9 years during the first 12 months of the war. In just one year, it erased over a century of progress from the pre-war level of 75.5 years.
Life expectancy for men dropped to 35.6 years from 73.6 years before the war—a decline of over 50 percent. For women, it declined from 77.5 to 47.5.
The findings indicate that Gaza’s population now has a lower life expectancy than any other country in the world. Nigeria, the country previously with the lowest life expectancy, has a life expectancy at birth of 54.46 years.
The study based itself on data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which estimates that Israeli forces have directly killed 45,936 Palestinians, with more than 10,000 individuals missing or trapped under rubble between October 7, 2023, and January 8, 2025.
The figures in the latest The Lancet study are likely to be an underestimation, as they do not account for deaths uncounted in official government statistics of deaths due to Israel’s deliberate attempts to inflict starvation, dehydration, and the destruction of Gaza’s medical infrastructure.
The authors noted that “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”.
