Lives saved, lives lost, and under-reported COVID-19 deaths: Excess and non-excess mortality in relation to cause-specific mortality during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden

Eleonora Mussino, Gunnar Andersson, Sunnee Billingsley, Sven Drefahl, Matthew Wallace and Siddartha Aradhya
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Eleonora Mussino: Stockholms Universitet
Gunnar Andersson: Stockholms Universitet
Sunnee Billingsley: Stockholms Universitet
Sven Drefahl: Stockholms Universitet
Matthew Wallace: Stockholms Universitet
Siddartha Aradhya: Stockholms Universitet

Demographic Research, 2024, vol. 50, issue 1, 1-40

Abstract: Background: The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths differed across countries and across waves of the pandemic. Patterns also differed between groups within a country. Objective: We combine data on excess mortality with data on cause-of-death-specific mortality in the case of Sweden to identify which groups had excess mortality beyond what can be captured by analyses of COVID-19-specific deaths. We also explore the possibility that some groups may have benefited in terms of reduced all-cause mortality, potentially due to home-centered living conditions during the pandemic. Methods: We produced and compared three sets of group-specific incidence rates: deaths from (1) any cause in 2020, (2) any cause in 2019, (3) any cause excluding COVID-19 in 2020. We compared rates across different socioeconomic profiles based on combinations of sex, age, marital status, education, and country of birth. Contribution: We show that many of those who died during 2020 would not have done so in the absence of the pandemic. We find some evidence of COVID-19 mortality underestimation, mainly among individuals with a migration background. We also found groups for which mortality decreased during the pandemic, even when including COVID-19 mortality. Progression across the first and second waves of the pandemic shows that more groups appeared to become protected over time and that there was less underestimation of COVID-19 mortality in the second part of 2020.

JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:demres:v:50:y:2024:i:1

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2024.50.1

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