Summary
In 2020 COVID was deadly and life expectancy fell
Year before pandemic gives a better base for comparison
Economy is 11.5% larger now than at the end of 2019
Incomes are higher now but voters are still mad about inflation
WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump’s end-of-campaign arguments to voters choosing between him and Democrat Kamala Harris have focused on an old standby in U.S. politics: Asking voters whether they are better off now than they were four years ago.
He may want to check his dates. In 2020, the last year of Trump’s presidency, U.S. life expectancy fell by 1.8 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a National Center for Health Statistics review of the year, and more than 350,000 people died from the virus, which made it the third-leading cause of death.
The U.S. economy experienced one of its worst-ever quarters, when gross domestic product plunged at a 28% annual rate from April through June. Despite a startling rebound in the three months that followed – largely the result of federal deficit spending on benefits approved by both parties to keep households afloat through the health crisis – the U.S. economy was smaller in the final full quarter of Trump’s term – the fourth quarter of 2020 – than it was at the end of 2019.
To be fairer to himself, Trump might want to dial the calendar back a year to 2019, but even then the record is mixed. If one thing stands out about now versus then it is how similar many aspects of the economy look, a testament, many economists feel, to the success of the largely bipartisan effort to keep a health catastrophe from becoming an economic one.
