Cumulative Excess Deaths in New Zealand in the COVID-19 Era: Biases from Ignoring Changes in Population Growth Rates

John Gibson

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato

Abstract: Accurate data on health and economic outcomes are needed to evaluate policy responses to COVID-19. A potentially comprehensive health indicator is excess deaths, which shows the gap between all-cause deaths and deaths to be expected under normal circumstances. New Zealand's public health community has seized upon an excess deaths series that seemingly shows negative cumulative excess mortality in the first three years of COVID-19 - in other words, fewer deaths than expected. This is a flawed measure because it ignores changes in population growth. There was a rapid rise in deaths in New Zealand in the 2015-19 period, due to immigration-driven population growth rates of two percent per annum. This growth came almost to a standstill after the border closed in March 2020 so methods of extrapolating from the past to predict future deaths, to ascertain if actual deaths exceed the projection, must take account of this sharp change in population growth rates. Rather than New Zealand being unique, in having negative cumulative excess deaths in the COVID-19 era, as claimed by public health commentators, cumulative deaths are about four percent above expected deaths once population changes are accounted for. Several developed countries had better outcomes according to this indicator.

Keywords: COVID-19; excess deaths; migration; population growth; New Zealand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2023-04-15
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.its.waikato.ac.nz/wai/econwp/2302.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Cumulative excess deaths in New Zealand in the COVID-19 era: biases from ignoring changes in population growth rates (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wai:econwp:23/02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand, 3240. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Geua Boe-Gibson ().