A research team from the UAB's Demographic Studies Centre (CED) and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) publishes the first comprehensive demographic study of the first two years of war on the Gaza Strip, representing a historic regression to levels seen at the end of the Ottoman era, over 100 years ago. Distribution by the age and sex of victims breaks with the pattern of conventional conflicts, where excess mortality is usually concentrated among young male combatants. In Gaza, the violence has crossed over to the non-combatant population.
The study War, So Much War… Death, How Much Death: Two Years of Demographic Collapse in Gaza is published in the journal Perspectives Demogràphiques and was conducted by CED-UAB researcher Enrique Acosta, and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) Diego Alburez Gutierrez, Irena Chen and Ana C. Gómez Ugarte. The study was conducted with the need to quantify the real impact of twenty-four months of conflict in an area where the destruction of registration infrastructure and thousands of bodies still lying under the rubble seriously distort official figures.
In October 2025, Gaza's Ministry for Health registered 67,160 direct deaths; however, independent studies based on capture-recapture methods and representative population surveys in the field have converged to place structural under-reporting at around 40%. To correct this gap, the authors of the study developed a Bayesian model that corrects the structural under-reporting of official statistics. Thus, the study estimates more than 115,000 cumulative direct deaths—with an uncertainty range of 104,000 to 129,000 deaths—equivalent to the loss of 5% of the initial resident population, and documents an unprecedented collapse in survival levels, with life expectancy at birth plummeting to 29.5 years during the first year of conflict.
According to the authors, "dimensioning this devastation with methodological rigour is an indispensable ethical and scientific imperative on which to base future evidence-based reparation processes".
A historical setback of more than 100 years
The analysis, separated by years of war, exposes the extreme intensity of the conflict. In the first year (October 2023–October 2024), the mortality rate rose 12.7 times the usual levels and life expectancy at birth fell to 29.5 years, a 60% decrease when compared to times of no-war. In the second year (October 2024–October 2025), relative risk continued to be 7.4 times greater than the usual risk and life expectancy at birth rose to 40.4 years.
Based on historical reconstructions of the region's demographics, these figures are equivalent to a return to survival levels at the end of the Ottoman era, more than a century ago. The average age at death from direct war-related causes is just 26 years for women and 28 for men, implying an average loss of 54 and 49 years of potential life, respectively; that is, the deceased lived only a third of what would have been expected under ordinary conditions.
The distribution by age and sex of the victims breaks with the usual pattern of armed conflicts, in which excess deaths tend to be concentrated among young male combatants.
In Gaza, large-scale bombing of residential areas and the systemic destruction of vital infrastructure have shifted the danger to the non-combatant population: 57% of direct deaths during the first year were among children under 15, women, and people over 60. This proportion remained above 40% during the second year.
Each death also triggers a "shock wave of grief" that destabilises family and community environments, redistributes caregiving roles to the most vulnerable segments, and creates a serious generational trauma that is difficult to reverse.
A "lethal inertia" that will extend in time
Enrique Acosta, researcher at the CED and one of the main authors of the study, warns that: "Current estimates represent only a minimum threshold. Malnutrition, psychological trauma, the forced displacement of more than 90% of the population, and health and environmental degradation constitute a 'lethal inertia' with effects on mortality that will continue to materialise for several years. Food insecurity and health collapse require prolonged periods to manifest themselves statistically as punishable deaths, unlike direct traumatic violence."
Added to all this is the collapse in birth rates directly resulting from living conditions. According to data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the Gaza Strip—which had an initial population of approximately 2.1 million people—has experienced a net population contraction of 10.6% in two years as a result of a combination of violent mortality, the forced exodus of some 100,000 people, and a collapse in fertility.
Original article: Acosta, E., Alburez-Gutierrez, D., Chen, I. i Gómez-Ugarte, A. C. (2026) Quanta, quanta guerra… Quanta, quanta mort: dos anys de col·lapse demogràfic a Gaza. Perspectives Demogràfiques. Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
