Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229284 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2020/60
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
COVID-19 causes extremely high mortality among the old. This motivates a comparison of the losses of future lifetime years and future lifetime years of work ensuing from a hypothetical 25,000 excess deaths in Italy, whose affluent population is one of the world's oldest, with those in Kenya, whose population is one of the most youthful and poor. If Italy's excess mortality profile were scaled up three-fold and then came to pass in Kenya, the aggregate loss of future lifetime working years would be slightly higher than Italy's, whereas the aggregate number of deaths and the loss of future lifetime years would be only about one third of Italy's-with all aggregate losses scaleable. Italy's profile implies a loss of 9.9 years of expected future life for each death and 1.8 years of expected working life, both scale-invariant within wide limits. For Kenya, the corresponding estimates are 14.0 and 8.2 years. Vaccines and debt relief apart, these findings suggest that donors might do better to concentrate on the old enemies malaria, HIV/AIDS, and diseases of childhood.
Subjects: 
age structure
COVID-19
future years lost
Italy
Kenya
JEL: 
J1
J10
J11
O57
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-817-7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
462.76 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.