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Life Health > Life Insurance

U.S. Q3 Mortality Stays High

By Allison Bell

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What You Need to Know

  • The new numbers are about 5% lower than the comparable numbers for 2022.
  • The numbers are more than 10% higher than the numbers for 2019.
  • One question is how mortality for your clients will compare with general-population mortality.

The total number of U.S. deaths recorded in September, and in the third quarter of the year, might have been much higher than the totals recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic showed up, early figures suggest.

The total number of deaths recorded in preliminary figures for the four-week period ending Sept. 23 was 13% higher than the number recorded during the comparable period in 2019, according to ThinkAdvisor analysis of the death data analysts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use to assess the impact of influenza and flu-like outbreaks.

The death counts include deaths from all causes, including accidents and old age.

The total number of deaths recorded during the three-month period ending Sept. 23 was 11% higher than the total the CDC recorded for the comparable period in 2019.

The new numbers still look better than the death counts recorded from 2020 through 2022, when the pandemic was raging. The September count is 4.9% lower than the count for September 2022, and the count for the third quarter is 4.7% lower than the count for the third quarter of 2022.

What it means: A lingering increase in the U.S. mortality rate might continue to be a problem for clients planning for retirement, shopping for life insurance or engaging in other activities that involve life expectancy calculations.

The raw numbers: The CDC recorded 208,852 deaths for September, or about 24,000 more than in September 2019, and 650,780 for the quarter, or about 64,000 more than in the third quarter of 2019.

Data details: The CDC depends on states to send in death totals.

Some of the many factors affecting the completeness and accuracy of the data are states’ ability to send in data quickly; holidays; technical and staffing problems at the CDC; and changes in data collection and analysis methods.

Pandemic-related factors that could increase mortality include COVID-19 itself; the after effects of COVID-19 infections; the effects of efforts to prevent and treat COVID-19; the lingering economic impact of COVID-19; and the impact of the pandemic on the U.S. health care delivery system.

Changes could also reflect trends in health conditions other than COVID, such heart disease and cancer.

The oldest baby boomers are turning 76 this year, and much of the increase in the number of deaths could be the result in an increase in the number of U.S. residents ages 75 and older.

The insured population: Insurance company actuaries have emphasized, in COVID-19 impact reports prepared for the Society of Actuaries, that mortality rates for people with life insurance and annuities may be different than the mortality rates for the general population.

People who can get through a life insurance underwriting process may be stronger and healthier than the average person, and people who buy annuities may have good reason to believe that they will live a long time.

A team that included representatives from the SOA’s SOA Research Institute recently reported that, in the first quarter of this year, in spite of a COVID-19 and flu spike that hit hard in January, the claim count for fully underwritten individual life was just 4% lower than the average claim count for the first quarter of each year from 2017 through 2019.

The team found a 4% increase in the claim amount over the 2017-2019 average, after adjusting for various trends unrelated to the pandemic. That was smaller than the increases the team found for most quarters during the pandemic, but the actual-to-expected ratio was only a little lower than in the second quarter of 2021, when the country was heading toward a big wave of COVID-19 cases.

Credit: Thinkstock

Allison Bell

Think_Allison

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