Excess summer mortality at young ages: do long school holidays matter?
Abstract
In this paper we analyze the seasonality of total mortality at younger ages in Russia compared with other countries. To decompose the time series into a trend, seasonality, and a random component and to perform seasonality tests, the TRAMO SEATS procedure was applied to short-term mortality data from the Short-term Mortality Fluctuations Human Mortality Database in 2000-2020. Summer seasonality was estimated as the ratio of average mortality in summer to average mortality per year after the trend component was excluded from the time series.
In Russia, there exists a significant summer seasonality of child and adolescent mortality: at the age of 5-9 years, mortality in the summer months exceeds the average mortality per year by 21%; at the age of 10-14 years old, by 32%; and at the age of 15-19 years old, by 19%. In the vast majority of countries included in the analysis, the seasonality of child mortality in general and the summer seasonality in particular are noticeably lower than in Russia, especially in the age groups of 5-9 and 10-14 years. It is only after the age of 15 that excess summer mortality at young ages becomes relatively common in other countries.
The pronounced seasonality of mortality in younger age groups may, among other things, be the result of long school holidays, during which many children find themselves without proper supervision and accompaniment. To test this hypothesis, we compared the length of summer holidays in the STMF countries with child and adolescent seasonality. We show that there is a significant positive relationship between these indicators: longer holidays correspond to more pronounced excess summer mortality, and this result remains stable for different age groups.
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