The Determinants of Non-COVID-19 Excess Deaths During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-country Panel Study

This paper examines the determinants of non-COVID excess deaths during the COVID pandemic between January and June 2020. These are the extra deaths occurring during the pandemic which are not directly attributable to COVID. While emerging literature examines the determinants of COVID deaths, few look at non-COVID excess deaths, though early estimates suggest they are enough to be seen as a pandemic in their own count. We investigate the impact of factors including COVID deaths and cases, lockdown stringency, economic support and search intensity for non-COVID conditions on excess deaths, using Fixed Effects and GMM estimations. We also use quantile regression to assess the differential impacts of the variables at different stages of the excess death distribution. First, we find that excess deaths are increasing and concave in COVID deaths, and that the rate of growth, as well as the level, of COVID deaths has a significant and positive impact. Second, we find some evidence that stringency of lockdown increases excess deaths by a maximum of 16 extra per-million population. Third, we find a reduction in search intensity for other conditions significantly increases excess deaths, implying that policymakers should ensure public health messaging for other conditions during a pandemic. JEL Classifications: I12, I18, I11