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Funder: Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 896821 Leverhulme Trust Large Centre Grant University of Oxford John Fell Fund ROCKWOOL Foundation’s Excess Deaths grant, Funder: Estonian Research Council grant PSG 669, Funder: University of Oxford John Fell Fund European Research Council grant ERC-2021-CoG-101002587, Funder: ROCKWOOL Foundation’s Excess Deaths grant, Funder: Leverhulme Trust Large Centre GrantUniversity of Oxford John Fell Fund, Funder: Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 896821Leverhulme Trust Large Centre GrantUniversity of Oxford John Fell Fund, The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented rise in mortality that translated into life expectancy losses around the world, with only a few exceptions. We estimate life expectancy changes in 29 countries since 2020 (including most of Europe, the United States and Chile), attribute them to mortality changes by age group and compare them with historic life expectancy shocks. Our results show divergence in mortality impacts of the pandemic in 2021. While countries in western Europe experienced bounce backs from life expectancy losses of 2020, eastern Europe and the United States witnessed sustained and substantial life expectancy deficits. Life expectancy deficits during fall/winter 2021 among people ages 60+ and

In December 2022, the German Pension Insurance announced an estimated surplus of €2.1 billion for the past year. President Roßbach partly explained this balance was due to the 'Corona Pandemic, which has led to an increase in mortality, especially among older people'. Here, the author takes a closer look at the demographics behind that statement and calculates the pandemic-related population deficit among ages 65 and above across Europe. The article also looks at population aging under conditions of continuously reduced life expectancy.

Early evidence demonstrates that the fertility response to the COVID-19 pandemic has varied across European countries. Yet, prior research indicates that fertility responses to disasters are often localized sub-nationally. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 incidence, economic pandemic impacts, and the affectedness by virus containment measures varied subnationally across Europe during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sub-national variation in the fertility response seems therefore possible. We conducted a rigorous data collection effort in 28 European countries (equaling 241 European sub-national regions) and used cutting-edge forecasting methods to assess sub-national variation in the fertility response to the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. While we find sub-national variation, our results reveal that the fertility response to the pandemic was dominated by the country level, with Southern European countries witnessing more negative fertility response to the early pandemic than Northern Europe. Variance decomposition even indicates a ‘nationalization’ of birth rates during the winter months of 2020, as the within- country variance in fertility declined and between-country variance increased. Nonetheless, highly urbanized areas in Europe experienced significantly steeper fertility declines as a response to the beginning of the pandemic, which is partly explained by their higher SARSCoV-2 incidence rates. SARS-CoV-2 incidence rates emerged as another important predictor of the fertility response more broadly. Higher incidences were associated with steeper fertility declines across the regions. Overall, country-level estimates represent fertility responses to the COVID-19 pandemic generally well, but the regional dimension provides additional important insight into how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted fertility.

Investigating fertility response to pandemic so far was focused on the country level. However, large sub-national variation in fertility is well- documented. A regional and monthly perspective is important to fully assess fertility response to the pandemic. The study aims to: a) document sub- national monthly birth rate changes in November 2020- April 2021 (first Covid-19 wave conceptions in February 2020-July 2020), by comparing observed to expected monthly birth rates (“excess births”), b) Assess the ‘significance’ of observed changes light of expected monthly birth rates (forecasts) based on modelling prior trends, and c) explore the association between NUTS2-level regions’ “excess births” and their first wave Covid-19 affectedness.

BackgroundWhile there is a consensus that the risk of death follows a Gompertz law over much of the adult age span, no such agreement exists about the parametric form of mortality at the very beginning of life with most literature on the topic suggesting either an exponential or various power-law expressions.ObjectiveIn this paper I aim to identify the parametric shape of the infant mortality age-trajectory as observed in recent US birth cohorts across a range of social and medical strata.ResultsAge-specific infant mortality in the US displays both power-law and exponential behavior and is better described by a product of those functions: an "exponentially-truncated power-law". Across all infant populations under consideration the age-trajectory of mortality following birth is initially dominated by a power-law regime and over the course of infancy eventually approaches an exponential decline of less than a 1% reduction per additional day of age. The hazard of infant death varies in a highly non-proportional fashion by prematurity and health of the infant upon birth.ContributionThe exponentially-truncated power-law hazard is a novel tool for the study of infant mortality being more parsimonious than smoothing-splines while providing interpretable parameters and an excellent fit over a range of diverse populations. The transition from a power-law dominated neonatal mortality schedule to an exponential post-neonatal hazard has not been noted before and suggests an underlying shock-recovery or mortality selection process.