Wettstein et al 2022 — Will Survivors of the First Year of the Pandemic Have Lower Mortality

Summary

Using pre-pandemic population distributions from the American Community Survey (ACS, 2019) and Health and Retirement Study (HRS, 2018) matched to 2020 National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) death data, Wettstein et al. simulate the April 2021 survivor population and construct revised life tables. They find that because COVID-19 disproportionately killed already-high-mortality individuals (older, chronically ill), the surviving population has slightly lower expected future mortality — but the effect is modest, with 10-year mortality falling by ~1 percentage point (pp) for the oldest groups only. The article is a 6-page Center for Retirement Research (CRR) Issue in Brief (22-17, October 2022) summarizing a longer CRR working paper.

Key Claims

COVID deaths among Americans 60+ (300,000 in the first pandemic year) were concentrated in already-high-mortality groups — those with cancer, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, lung disease, or obesity
10-year mortality declined ~1 pp for men and women aged 80–99 after the first pandemic year; near-zero effect for 60-somethings (men 90–99: 94.9%→93.8%; women 90–99: 91.4%→90.3%)
Selection efficiency declines with age: for 60-somethings, ~80% of the maximum possible mortality reduction was realized; for 90-somethings, only ~50% (at the oldest ages nearly everyone is already frail, limiting COVID's ability to be selective)
The selection effect is modest in aggregate because 300,000 deaths represent only ~0.4% of the 78M Americans over 60
First-order effect of COVID on Social Security (SS) finances is positive (fewer surviving benefit recipients); the survivor selection effect is a second-order countervailing force, likely swamped by ongoing acute/long-COVID mortality increases
Analysis assumes negligible ongoing COVID mortality — a conservative assumption designed to minimize anticipated improvement in SS finances

Concepts Introduced or Extended

Survivor Selection Effect

Entities Mentioned

Quotes

"While many Americans have died of COVID, these deaths were not random." "The reason is that 300,000 deaths, though a devastating toll, is not large relative to the U.S. population over age 60 of around 78 million in 2020."

My Take

A methodologically clean brief that makes a subtle but important point: COVID's mortality impact was so selective that it constitutes a natural experiment in frailty sorting. The "modest effect" conclusion is calibrated conservatively (ignores long COVID, assumes no ongoing COVID mortality), which is honest but may understate the selection mechanism's potential. The age-gradient in selection efficiency (80% for 60s, 50% for 90s) is an interesting result: very old populations are already so concentrated among the frail that COVID cannot further concentrate deaths there. The Social Security finance angle is well-motivated and policy-relevant.