Covid-19: the contribution of demography

Research Projects
To answer a number of the many questions on the impact of the coronavirus on populations and societies in France and across the world, INED has brought together the entire range of its disciplines and resources. This involves coordinating and supporting a number of projects, including an internet platform dedicated to the daily tracking of deaths due to Covid-19, the conducting of new surveys, participation in several international research projects, and wide diffusion of scientific publications. INED began designing and running a number of major, innovative research projects of its own and jointly with other institutions as early as March 2020. The projects encompass all stages in the life cycles and investigate a variety of lockdown-related issues, including home schooling and children’s behavior, housing and living conditions, family solidarity, remote working, the quality and resilience of maternal and neonatal care services, and end-of-life and death in nursing homes.
Publication
The research projects on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have produced a considerable amount of scientific findings. INED has compiled a selection of articles to help you understand certain phenomena better; for example, the impact of the health crisis on life expectancy and excess mortality in France; its repercussions on the health of essential and low-wage workers; the worsening of social inequalities due to the pandemic by family origin and minority “invisibility,” particularly in the département of Seine-Saint-Denis immediately outside Paris; and ethno-racial inequality in the United States in connection with the pandemic.
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Demography of COVID-19 deaths

By creating a bilingual French-English internet platform providing international data on the demographics of deaths linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, INED has shown its excellence in making standardized data available to the scientific community and citizens at large. International comparisons are a key, integral component of INED-led research. A substantial labor of rationally organized, continuous data accumulation is what made it possible as early as April 2020 to begin studying mortality variations across a considerable number of countries in connection with respective national policies for combatting COVID-19; to assess the French situation from an international perspective; and to document death data collection methodologies in the countries involved.

Many countries took drastic, unprecedented measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. Within Europe, the first country to be hit, Italy, was also the first to respond by deciding to quarantine the main epidemic “hot spots,” decreeing a country-wide lockdown, and choosing to suspend all non-essential activities. The other European countries, with the exception of Sweden, instated a general lockdown with varyingly tight restrictions at some point between the March 5 and 23.

At the international level, policy measures have been both multiple and diverse (prohibition of large gatherings, closing of schools and public venues, border closings, population lockdowns, tracking people’s movements via their cell phones, and others); those policies have had repercussions on COVID-19 mortality dynamics. By taking into account demographics-based disparities in mortality, researchers have been able to develop the tools needed for rigorous assessment of the quality and comparability of all available data on deaths due to the virus. This preliminary work is crucial to precise analysis of trends and well-founded projections.

Data is now available for Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States.

Read our interview with INED senior researcher France Meslé and Jean-Marie Robine, a senior researcher at INSERM and advisor on aging and social issues in France and across the world to INED’s Office of the Director.

Links for more info

DC-Covid Website