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Covid-19 related excess mortality: An analysis by age for selected countries
1School of Economics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Plos One
|July 16, 2026
Summary
Covid-19 excess mortality rankings are robust to age adjustments and metric choices. Age-adjusted excess mortality shows a negative correlation with GDP per capita, but not significantly with inequality.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Epidemiology
- Demography
Background:
- Excess mortality is a key metric for assessing pandemic impact.
- Age structure variations necessitate age adjustment for accurate international comparisons.
- Covid-19 mortality rates differ significantly across age groups.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare crude vs. age-adjusted excess mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic.
- To evaluate the robustness of country rankings based on different mortality metrics.
- To explore correlations between mortality, GDP per capita, and inequality.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of excess mortality data using the Short Term Mortality Fluctuations dataset.
- Application of standardized age distribution for age-adjusted excess mortality calculation.
- Calculation of Years of Life Lost (YLL) and application of cluster analysis.
Main Results:
- Age adjustment minimally impacted overall country rankings for excess mortality (rank correlation > 0.95).
- Age-adjusted excess mortality showed a significant negative correlation with GDP per capita (-0.69).
- No statistically significant correlation was found between age-adjusted excess mortality and the Gini coefficient (0.11).
Conclusions:
- Country rankings for Covid-19 excess mortality are stable regardless of age adjustment or metric used.
- Cluster analysis revealed distinct groupings, notably former planned economies in Central and Eastern Europe.
- Mortality metric choice and age standardization do not substantially alter the comparative assessment of pandemic impact across nations.
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