Appendix for The COVID-19 Pandemic, Years of Life Lost, and Life Expectancy: Decomposition Using Individual-Level Mortality Data

This Appendix provides methodology details and additional results for The COVID-19 Pandemic, Years of Life Lost, and Life Expectancy: Decomposition Using Individual-Level Mortality Data. The data on COVID deaths underlying this Appendix is generally current through September 30, 2021. We expect to update the data regularly, but may not update this Appendix each time. This project was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Award as 3 UL1 TR001436-0651 for “Randomized COVID-19 Testing in Vulnerable Communities and Risk Tool Creation.” The authors have no competing interests. This project has been approved by the Medical College of Wisconsin Institutional Review Board. To provide for a more linear presentation, this Appendix includes selected results that also appear in the text.

We draw on individual death certificate data for three Midwest areas (Cook County, Illinois; Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; and the state of Indiana), and aggregate data for the rest of the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). We also provide national estimates, relying on state-level data.

This Appendix Part I describes our data sources and data cleaning. Part II discusses how we measure life expectancy without COVID. Part III discusses how we measure PFR due to COVID. Part IV discusses our LEL estimates. Our mortality estimates are based on deaths recorded as COVID deaths, and do not include excess deaths during the pandemic period from other causes.

Keywords: COVID-19, life expectancy, COVID mortality rates

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Barreto Parra, Paula Natalia and Atanasov, Vladimir A. and Whittle, Jeffrey and Meurer, John and Luo, Qian and Zhang, Ruohao and Black, Bernard S., Appendix for The COVID-19 Pandemic, Years of Life Lost, and Life Expectancy: Decomposition Using Individual-Level Mortality Data (January 7, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4003532 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4003532