STUMP » Articles » STUMP 2023: Mortality Trends and Resources » 18 January 2023, 22:02

As with my public finance project for 2023, I have an organizational plan in mortality for 2023.

For now, this post is it.

[looking around]

It is a work in progress, but I will be pinning it at all my places (Twitter, substack, LinkedIn) to make it easy to find.

I have a variety of resources I have written over the years, and I will be returning to this post to add through 2023. This is intended not to organize all my mortality-related posts, but more of the core trend, definitional, and conceptual posts.

High-Level Trends and Concepts

May 2022: U.S. Mortality Trends Through the Pandemic – this was a talk I gave originally at an actuarial conference, and I adapted it for a YouTube video:

Life expectancy

Dec 2022: Merry Christmas! Have Some Finalized 2021 U.S. Mortality Stats!

Sep 2022: U.S. life expectancy fell almost 1 year (again) in 2021

Apr 2022: 2021 U.S. Mortality News Explainer: Life Expectancy, Death Rates, and More

Jun 2021: Mortality with Meep: U.S. Life Expectancy Fell 2.4% in 2020, and Death Rates Increased 16.1%

Jul 2021: Mortality Basics with Meep: Median, Mode, and Mean Age at Death and Life Expectancy

Mortality Rates

Apr 2022: Preliminary results for 2021 All-Cause U.S. Mortality: 21% More Deaths than 2019, 2% More Deaths than 2020

Jul 2021: Mortality Basics with Meep: Age-Adjusted Death Rates v. Crude Death Rates for U.S. 1968-2020

Jun 2021: Mortality with Meep: U.S. Life Expectancy Fell 2.4% in 2020, and Death Rates Increased 16.1%

Apr 2020: Mortality with Meep: Major U.S. Mortality trends 1955-2017

Sept 2019: Mortality with Meep: Some Mortality Trends in the Storyline Game – that had some interesting results.

Actuarial concepts

Feb 2019: Mortality with Meep: Cohort vs. Period Mortality Tables

Jan 2019: Mortality with Meep: Death Distributions and Survival Probability

Dec 2018: Mortality with Meep: q_x – UPDATED WITH CONTENT FROM STU

Excess Mortality

Jan 2023: Preliminary look at 2022 U.S. Total Mortality – Continuing Excess Mortality

Jan 2022: Excess Mortality For Working Age Adults Way Up in Third Quarter of 2021, Driven By Covid and Drug Overdoses

Nov 2021: A Deeper Dive into Increased Deaths by Race/Ethnicity and Geographic Patterns, U.S., 2020-2021

Apr 2021: Mortality with Meep: Ranking the States (and NYC and DC) by Excess Mortality

Jan 2021: Mortality with Meep: Excess Mortality in California, Texas, and Florida by Race/Ethnicity

Jan 2021: Mortality with Meep: Excess Mortality in New York and New York City

Jan 2021: Mortality with Meep: Total U.S. Excess Mortality in 2020, by Race and Ethnicity

Age Groups

Children — Age 1-17: Childhood Mortality Trends, 1999-2021 (provisional), Ages 1-17 Revisited: Teen Mortality Increased 30% 2019 to 2021

Young Adults — Age 18-39: approximately the Millennials in 2020-2021 Part 1 and Part 2, plus the podcast

Middle Agers — Age 40-59: approximately Gen X – Middle-aged Massacre (too!): Increase in Mortality for Ages 40-59 in the U.S. for 2020-2021 Mainly Driven By COVID

Young Seniors — Age 60-79: approximately Boomers – Baby Boomer Mortality Experience: Welcome to Old Age! 2020-2021 U.S. Mortality Increase for Ages 60-79 was Mostly COVID

Old Seniors — Age 80+: mainly Silent Generation (as older generations are mostly dead at this point) – Silent Generation Has Odd 2021: COVID Over 100% of 2021 Mortality Increase Compared to 2019 in the U.S. for those over age 85

Cause of Death

Ranking by Cause of Death

Jan 2023: Top Causes of Death by Age Group, 2021: Finalized U.S. Stats

May 2022: Top Causes of Death for 2021: Heart Disease, Cancer, and COVID

Jan 2022: Top Causes of Death by Age Group, 2020: Death Rates

Jan 2022: Top Causes of Death by Age Group, 2020: Raw Numbers

Apr 2021: Mortality with Meep: Top Causes of Death in the United States in 2020

June 2017: Mortality Monday: Cause of Death, 2014 — I actually get into detailed cause of death here

COVID

Jan 2023: How Many COVID Deaths Have There Been in the United States?

Dec 2022: Ranking the states by COVID age-adjusted death rates

Feb 2022: Geography of Mortality: State Ranking by Increase in Total Mortality and COVID Mortality, 2020-2021, Provisional

Sep 2021: Spanish flu v. COVID-19: Comparing the Numbers and Forgetting the Lessons

Heart disease

Jul 2021: Mortality with Meep: Cause of Death Trend — Heart Disease — 1999-2020

Cancer

Dec 2022: Movember 2022: Prostate Cancer – Geography and Race/Ethnicity

Aug 2021: Mortality with Meep: Cause of Death Trend — Cancer — 1999-2020

Feb 2020: Mortality with Meep: Cancer Statistics — an Introduction

Drug Overdoses

Nov 2022: Movember 2022: Men and Drug Overdoses (and Giving Tuesday!)

Mar 2022: Drug Overdoses, Part 1: High-Level Trends, 1999-2020

Mar 2022: Drug Overdose Deaths, Part 2: U.S. Age-Related Trends 1999-2020 with Provisional Results in 2021

Mar 2022: Drug Overdose Deaths, Part 3: Geographical Differences for 2019 and 2020

Jul 2021: Mortality with Meep: Huge Increase in Death by Drug Overdose in 2020

April 2017: Mortality Monday: Huge Heroin Death Increases

Alcohol-related deaths

Mar 2022: Dead is dead: Increased Alcohol-Related Deaths, U.S., 2020-2021

Mar 2022: Alcohol-related deaths, part 2: Geographical Differences for 2019 and 2020

Suicide

Nov 2022: Read the News with Meep: On Suicide Trends by Race (and Sex) in 2021 (and Earlier) — also explains how I think through reading through the news

Nov 2022: Movember 2022: The Sex Gap in Suicide

Sep 2022: World Suicide Prevention Day: U.S. Suicide Trend Update through 2021

May 2022: U.S. Gun Deaths are Mostly Suicides, not Homicides

Jan 2022: Suicide: Trends, 1968-2020, and Provisional Counts Through June 2021

Nov 2021: Movember Fundraising: Men and Suicide

Jul 2017: Mortality Monday: Suicide — Rates

July 2017: Mortality Monday: Suicide — the Absolute Numbers

Homicide

Feb 2022: Homicide: Trends, 1968-2020, and Provisional Counts Through June 2021

Feb 2022: The Geography of Homicide — States, Base Rates, Increases, and Correlations

Motor Vehicle Accidents

Mar 2022: Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths: High-Level Trends, 1968-2020, Part 1

Mar 2022: Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths, Part 2: Age-Related Trends with Provisional Results in 2021

Mar 2022: Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths, Part 3: Geographical Differences, 2019 vs 2020

May 2017: Mortality Monday: All About Traffic Deaths!

Other accidental causes

Jul 2022: The Death of Ivana Trump: Falls are Dangerous for Seniors

May 2022: Summer Season Warning: Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning (Plus Drowning Mortality Trends)

Podcasts

STUMP — Death and Taxes

This is my podcast, hosted through substack, but also available through iTunes and Apple Podcasts. (Other services may have it, but I haven’t checked).

Not all the episodes are death-related, though, and not all are what I consider “core” concepts.

Some key episodes:

Jan 2023: Podcast Look at 2022 Excess Mortality

Nov 2022: Movember 2022: Men and Suicide

Nov 2022: Movember and Prostate Cancer Mortality Trends

Nov 2022: 2021 Provisional U.S. Population Mortality

Oct 2022: Geeking Out: Life Insurance and Mortality Experience Studies

Sep 2022: Advice on the CDC 2021 Life Expectancy Report

Aug 2022: Looking at Recent Mortality Increases — and Expectations for the Future

Jul 2022: Millennial Massacre Overview

Apr 2022: Death and Data

Videos

Mortality with Meep

My core video playlist of mortality-related videos, containing all the mortality videos.

Working with WONDER

In this video playlist, I demonstrate how to use the CDC WONDER death databases (finalized and provisional) and how to interpret some of the numbers one can extract from the system.

Some of the videos address COVID, but it doesn’t only look at 2020-2022 results. Some of the videos demonstrate getting information from older years (1999-2019, for example), aggregating by age, year, sex, etc.