The Longevity-Frailty Hypothesis: Evidence from COVID-19 Death Rates in Europe

Sammy Zahran; Levi Altringer; Ashok Prasad

The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.14.20065540 doi: medRxiv preprint equal, that a 1% increase in life expectancy at 65 is associated with percent inward shift in the date of epidemic launch. Table 4 reports coefficients for our two estimated least square models. In Model 1, controlling for bed capacity and tourism inflow, we find that a 1 percent increase in life expectancy at 65 is associated with a 14.21 percent increase (95% CI: 9.02, 19.41) in the COVID-19 death rate. In Model 2, we substitute our tourism inflow variable that proxies for epidemic seeding risk for the actual date of first death, CovDate, our response variable in equation (2). Adjusting for the date of first COVID-19 death and hospital bed capacity, we find that a 1 percent increase in life expectancy at 65 increases the COVID-19 death rate by 11.76 percent (95% CI: 5.69, 17.83). In Model 3, controlling for bed capacity and tourism inflow, we find that a 1 percent increase in life expectancy at 65 is associated with inward shift in the date of first COVID-19 death by -1.36 percent (95% CI: -2.17, 0.54).