The number of deaths registered in the first 13 weeks of 2013 was almost 9,000 (six per cent) higher than in the same period last year, according to death registration data for England and Wales, analysed by Towers Watson.
Provisional estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) indicate that there were 144,299 death registrations in England and Wales during the first 13 weeks of 2013. This compares with 135,583 during the first 13 weeks of 2012. Most of the 8,716 extra deaths – like most deaths in general – occurred amongst older sections on the population. There were 7,444 (six per cent) more deaths amongst people aged 75 or older, including 5,227 (ten per cent) additional deaths amongst people aged 85 and over.
Matthew Fletcher, a senior consultant at Towers Watson, said: “It may be going too far to blame the increase in deaths amongst older groups solely on the weather – the population was both a little bigger and slightly older than a year earlier. However, the cold start to 2013 still appears to have had a significant impact – for example, there were expected to be about 2.5 per cent more people aged 85 and over alive in 2013 than a year earlier but ten per cent more deaths were registered for this age group during the first 13 weeks of the year. The increase in death registrations would also have been steeper if the early Good Friday bank holiday had not closed registration offices on the final day of this period.”
Provisional death registration data also indicates that the number of deaths registered in the first three calendar months of 2013 was the highest in any quarter since Q1 2005.
Matthew Fletcher said: “The number of deaths at the start of 2013 was the highest for eight years. Some pension schemes are bound to have noticed an increase in deaths amongst their membership but they can’t read much into one quarter’s data when making assumptions about what will happen next. It’s possible that older people who survived the cold start to the year may be more likely to survive the rest of it and the severity of the colder months at the end of 2013 will be a factor. The last time this many deaths were registered in a three-month period was the first quarter of 2005, but that year as a whole did not see an especially high number of people dying.”
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