Exploring Excess Death (part 6)

I continue to investigate alternative methods for estimating excess death using ONS weekly registration data from 2010 - 2023

In part 5 of this series I finished with a slide comparing four different methods for estimating weekly cumulative excess all cause registered deaths in Englnd & Wales for the period 2010/w1 – 2023/w52. We observed a stupendous amount of variation between methods and I’m hoping this will have sobered readers good and proper!

When it comes to the slippery customer that is excess death no one method is ‘correct’ and no one method is ‘wrong’ for they all carry with them a bunch of pros and cons, along with degrees of sophistication, and all spread on some toasted assumptions. In essence, we are trying to compare the present with the past and this is always going to set us on a hiding to nothing.

I remember when I rolled out my first age-adjusted mortality time series for all cause death stretching from 2020 all the way back to 1970 in the original facebook version of the Almanac (now in mothballs). A rather aggressive group member told me in no uncertain terms that this was utterly pointle…