Gap in ‘excess deaths’ has widened between U.S. and Europe, but only partly due to COVID-19

New UCLA research reveals that the U.S. has substantially higher death rates at all but the oldest age groups than five similarly high-income European countries.The study, conducted by UCLA sociologist Patrick Heuveline, also found that the gap between the U.S. and the five other nations — England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — widened during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the study reveals, only a portion of that phenomenon was directly attributable to COVID-19.Heuveline found that between 2019 and 2021 in the U.S., the annual number of excess deaths — meaning the difference between the actual number of deaths and the number that would have been expected under normal condtions — nearly doubled. But his research concluded that 45% of that rise was due to causes other than COVID-19.The findings were published today in the open-access journal PLOS One.“The mortality gap widened during the pandemic, but not just due to the U.S. handling of the crisis mortality from COVID-19,” Heuveline said. “The chronic toll of excess deaths due to causes other than COVID-19 continued to increase as well, further demonstrating the U.S. health policy failure to integrate the social, psychological and economic dimensions of health, from a weak social security net and lack of health care access for all to poor health behaviors.”Calculating excess death rates can be useful for comparing mortality between different countries or subpopulations, a...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news