Top Charts 21-10: Differences in COVID-19 impact on pensioners in England, Scotland and Wales

Question:

Has the COVID-19 pandemic been felt differently by members of DB pension funds in England, Scotland and Wales?

Answer:

Yes. Pensioners living in the UK suffered pronounced increased mortality in the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the magnitude of these waves was experienced very differently in England, Scotland and Wales. The pandemic was felt the worst across both waves in England. The Scottish first wave was nearly as bad as in England, but the second wave was milder. The effect of both waves in Wales was much lower than in England, but the second wave was felt almost as severely as the first.

Below we show some “hot off the press” output from Club Vita’s latest pandemic research, shortly to be available to our subscribers, which explores relative differences in monthly mortality rates split by various characteristics across our database of 1 in 4 UK DB pensioners. We can also produce similar charts, digging deeper into specific regions within a country or considering factors such as age, socio-economic status, income and more. The recency of the data is made possible by our new life existence checking processes that significantly reduce the lag before reporting results.

^{Source: Club Vita analysis of approximately 1.5m VitaBank records with recent deaths enhanced by Life Existence Checking (LEC) processes. The chart shows variations in Age Standardised Monthly Mortality Rates about the level we would have expected based upon historical trends. A reading of 100% for a particular month would mean the mortality rate in our data was the same as the expected monthly rate of mortality (with no allowance for seasonal variations).}