Age & sex standardised annual all cause mortality 1970 – 2021

A quick look at the annual series for England & Wales (rev 2.0)

Up to now I’ve been churning out umpteen charts for quinary age band and sex by month for the period Jan 1970 – Dec 2021. Today I’m going to simplify matters and aggregate the monthly sub-totals into an annual total, thence to combine age groups by sex into a single figure that is as standardised as I can muster! Age adjusted mortality always needs a reference population and I have chosen 2012 as the reference year for the population profile in terms of age (18 bands) and sex. The ensuing chart compares favourably to a similar chart published in the BMJ.

The pandemic year of 2020 certainly stands out as a blip but some folk will consider this a mole hill with greater rates for all cause mortality being found no further back than 2008; others will look at the series from 2009 onward and consider it a mountain. Being an applied statistician I will consider the blip an opportunity for a spot of modelling.

We can start by looking at the first order differential for the series. We’ve encount…