Awards and Jury 2022

Prizewinners: Ainhoa Elelena LEGER and Silvia RIZZI

For their paper ‘Estimating excess mortality in French and Spanish regions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: An application of the later/earlier method’

Ainhoa Elena LEGER is a PhD student at the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics at the University of Southern Denmark. She received her Master in Statistics from the University of Padua (Italy), and she has pursued graduate training at the European Doctoral School of Demography. She is interested in developing statistical methods for demographic research, and her current work focuses on short-term mortality forecasting.

Silvia RIZZI is Assistant Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics at the University of Southern Denmark, where she obtained her PhD in 2018 working in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Biodemography. Her research focuses on mortality forecasting, health inequalities, cause-of-death analysis, and modelling of aggregated and limited data. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been estimating excess mortality and the harvested population.

 

Abstract

Estimates of excess deaths have been widely used to measure the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality. We investigate the validity of a new method—the later/earlier method—developed for forecasting the number of deaths one would expect if no shock occurs. We apply this method to estimate excess mortality during the first COVID-19 wave in France and Spain, stratified by age, sex, and region. Although both countries reported similar numbers of confirmed COVID-19 deaths, Spain recorded a higher excess death risk. The results confirm differences in COVID-19 vulnerability for population subgroups and spatial areas: adults aged 75–85 were the hardest hit; Île-de-France in France and Comunidad de Madrid in Spain registered the highest excess mortality. Applicable to other demographic phenomena, the later/earlier method is simple, requires fewer assumptions than other forecasting methods, and is less biased and more accurate than the 5-year average method.

 

The international jury 2022

A Word from the Jury President

Since 2015, the Population Early-Career Researcher Prize has been awarded to eligible researchers for their work. For the 2022 edition, the journal received nine manuscripts addressing a wide range of topics, including health and mortality, fertility, education, occupational trajectories, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Submissions covered different geographical contexts, including Africa, North America, Asia, and Europe. The number of submissions was lower this year, probably due to the particular health context since 2020.

After an initial screening, five manuscripts were shortlisted, each sent to two external reviewers.  The whole review process was double blind. The jury met on 10 February 2022.

I am pleased to announce that the 2022 prize goes to Ainhoa Elena Leger et Silvia Rizzi for their paper entitled ‘Estimating excess mortality in French and Spanish regions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: An application of the later/earlier method’.

Following a detailed review of the methods for estimating excess mortality in the short term, Leger and Rizzi describe the ‘later/earlier’ method for estimating excess deaths in France and Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic. They meticulously analyse weekly cause-of-death data and daily case and death statistics in both countries, producing informative results not only on pandemic-related excess mortality but also on differences in COVID-19 vulnerability for population subgroups and for specific regions. One key demonstration is that the later/earlier method is simple and requires fewer assumptions than other forecasting methods. It is also less biased and more accurate than the intuitive 5-year average method.

The article is scheduled to be published in this year’s third issue of Population. Authors of some of the shortlisted manuscripts have been invited to submit a revised version of their manuscript to the journal’s editorial board.

I hope that you enjoy reading this article and that it will encourage many early-career researchers to compete for the 2023 award.

Jean-François Kobiané

 

International jury of the 2022 competition

President: Jean-François Kobiané (Institut supérieur des sciences de la Population, Burkina Faso)

Members:

Pascale Breuil (Cnav, France)
Lionel Kesztenbaum (Ined, France)
Karen Neels (Université d’Anvers, Belgique)
Olivia Samuel (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, France)

Non-voting members:

Géraldine Duthé (Ined, France)
Anne Solaz (Ined, France)