A new paper based on insurance policy claims data estimates an additional 0.56 million deaths India in 2020 and 4.15 million more deaths in 2021, or a total of 4.71 million more deaths in the pandemic years.
The calculations in the paper are based on death claims settled by all life insurers, as reported by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) till March 2021, settlement of death claims by Life Insurance Corporation of India ,LIC) Civil Registration System (CRS) data on death registrations in India in April-December 2021, and during 2017-20.
Paper published in the latest issue of economic and political weekly (EPW), written by Mihir Mahajan, a public policy researcher at Takshashila Institution, and Shekhar Sathe, a banking and finance professional.
In its projections for global excess deaths released on May 5 – which the government has categorically rejected – the World Health Organization (WHO) projected 0.83 million more deaths in 2020 and 3.91 million additional deaths for 2021. “Based on an entirely different data source (life insurance claims), we show that death registrations are likely to drop 0.56 million in 2020. There are likely to be an additional 4.15 million deaths compared to the projected total. Taken together, these numbers are significantly higher than the government’s official number of 4,81,000 (0.481 million) Covid-19 deaths in 2020 and 2021,” the paper said. .
Their method is based on the assumption that the ratio of settled death claims to the number of deaths recorded in 2020 and 2021 is the same as in 2016-19, as the ratio has remained fairly stable – 24.53% in 2017, 24.12% in 2018, and 2019. in 23.68%.
For 2020, the authors used settled actual death claims to estimate missing death registrations. “This is hard data, not guesswork,” the authors said. Based partly on available data, the authors say they have conservatively estimated the number of death claims to be settled in 2021 to be approximately 3.03 million.
“A process that combines ‘settlement of claims’ and ‘registered deaths’. The chain of events leading to the settlement of a death claim is: (i) an insured person dies; (ii) the death registered and documents have been obtained; (iii) a death claim is filed with a life insurer and settled by the insurer on the basis of evidence of death (for example, a death certificate generated through the registration process) ,” the authors explained.
They make a disclaimer that they did not find data to estimate the ratio of settled death claims to the actual number of lives lost in the account of a person with multiple life insurance policies.
The paper argued that settlement of death claims is a good proxy for death registration, given how stable the ratio between claims and registered deaths is. Then, using data from new individual policies sold in 2019 and 2020, they conclude that throughout 2020 and 2021, the number of policies in effect probably does not differ much from the number of policies in effect in earlier periods.
Using the data, they calculated an estimated number of 86.81 lakh deaths during 2020. However, the actual deaths recorded in 2020 were just 81.5 lakh. Thus they estimate that 5.6 lakh or 0.56 million deaths are missing from the death registration data for 2020.
For 2021, the government has not released official data on death registrations or estimated total deaths. However, using the same methodology for 2020, the authors calculated from insurance data that the total estimated death registrations for 2021 are around 1.25 crore. This is higher than the total estimated deaths of 41.54 lakh or 4.15 million in the pre-pandemic year 2019.
The calculations in the paper are based on death claims settled by all life insurers, as reported by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) till March 2021, settlement of death claims by Life Insurance Corporation of India ,LIC) Civil Registration System (CRS) data on death registrations in India in April-December 2021, and during 2017-20.
Paper published in the latest issue of economic and political weekly (EPW), written by Mihir Mahajan, a public policy researcher at Takshashila Institution, and Shekhar Sathe, a banking and finance professional.
In its projections for global excess deaths released on May 5 – which the government has categorically rejected – the World Health Organization (WHO) projected 0.83 million more deaths in 2020 and 3.91 million additional deaths for 2021. “Based on an entirely different data source (life insurance claims), we show that death registrations are likely to drop 0.56 million in 2020. There are likely to be an additional 4.15 million deaths compared to the projected total. Taken together, these numbers are significantly higher than the government’s official number of 4,81,000 (0.481 million) Covid-19 deaths in 2020 and 2021,” the paper said. .
Their method is based on the assumption that the ratio of settled death claims to the number of deaths recorded in 2020 and 2021 is the same as in 2016-19, as the ratio has remained fairly stable – 24.53% in 2017, 24.12% in 2018, and 2019. in 23.68%.
For 2020, the authors used settled actual death claims to estimate missing death registrations. “This is hard data, not guesswork,” the authors said. Based partly on available data, the authors say they have conservatively estimated the number of death claims to be settled in 2021 to be approximately 3.03 million.
“A process that combines ‘settlement of claims’ and ‘registered deaths’. The chain of events leading to the settlement of a death claim is: (i) an insured person dies; (ii) the death registered and documents have been obtained; (iii) a death claim is filed with a life insurer and settled by the insurer on the basis of evidence of death (for example, a death certificate generated through the registration process) ,” the authors explained.
They make a disclaimer that they did not find data to estimate the ratio of settled death claims to the actual number of lives lost in the account of a person with multiple life insurance policies.
The paper argued that settlement of death claims is a good proxy for death registration, given how stable the ratio between claims and registered deaths is. Then, using data from new individual policies sold in 2019 and 2020, they conclude that throughout 2020 and 2021, the number of policies in effect probably does not differ much from the number of policies in effect in earlier periods.
Using the data, they calculated an estimated number of 86.81 lakh deaths during 2020. However, the actual deaths recorded in 2020 were just 81.5 lakh. Thus they estimate that 5.6 lakh or 0.56 million deaths are missing from the death registration data for 2020.
For 2021, the government has not released official data on death registrations or estimated total deaths. However, using the same methodology for 2020, the authors calculated from insurance data that the total estimated death registrations for 2021 are around 1.25 crore. This is higher than the total estimated deaths of 41.54 lakh or 4.15 million in the pre-pandemic year 2019.