The Covid Pandemic and Cohort Mortality: Causal Estimates from the US and France

Nicholas Mark , University of Wisconsin-Madison
Néstor Aldea-Ramos, University of Paris 1 and INED
Michel Guillot, University of Pennsylvania and INED
Lawrence Wu, New York University

Previous analyses of excess mortality from the Covid-19 pandemic have relied on period approaches. We take a novel cohort approach that follows specific birth cohorts through the pandemic. Our approach compares observed mortality trajectories, estimated from cohort mortality rates derived from monthly counts of deaths and populations by sex, to multiple estimated counterfactual trajectories. Confidence intervals are constructed via permutation tests. The approach results in some findings are well-known from period estimates -- e.g. effects were far larger in the US than in France -- and others that are novel -- e.g. we find effects of Covid for much younger cohorts than previously reported. Our cohort approach to estimating causal effects reveals demographic consequences obscured by period methods, and has broad applicability to future analyses of mortality shocks.

See paper

 Presented in Session P6. Health, Mortality, and Ageing 2