Cause-Specific Decomposition of Short-Term Mortality Disturbances: Application to the Analysis of Mortality Disturbances by Income Level in 10 Countries in 2020, during the First Wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Enrique Acosta , Centre for Demographic Studies

Identifying the cause-specific variations and their contribution to total mortality disturbances is fundamental to understanding the multiple mechanisms modulating total mortality changes during period mortality shocks, as is the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. This disaggregation of total disturbances into cause-specific contributions allows us to understand better the differences in mortality between populations, evaluate the pros and cons of the different governmental strategies, and unveil how preexisting inequalities translate into mortality differentials during period crises. Most analyses of cause-specific dynamics during mortality shocks rely exclusively on the decomposition by cause of life expectancy changes. However, this measure is inadequate to analyze mortality shocks mainly because it assumes an irrealistic counterfactual, gives different weights to deaths depending on age, and struggles to account for mortality trends. We propose an approach that decomposes all-cause mortality disturbances into cause-specific contributions, overcoming the abovementioned limitations. The approach consists of decomposing mortality disturbances — known in the literature as excess mortality — into cause-specific contributions. The basic principle of this decomposition is that all-cause mortality disturbances are composed of the sum of cause-specific disturbances. In other words, by adding together cause-specific deficits and excess, we obtain all-cause mortality disturbances. We apply the proposed approach to analyze cause-specific disturbances in 5 high-income and 5 middle-income countries in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. This approach offers valuable complementary information to better understand the etiological mechanisms driving mortality disturbances during mortality crisis periods.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 69. Mortality Inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic