13.11.2020 New Study: Ageing Society and SARS-CoV-2 Mortality

There are significant and ongoing efforts in different disciplines to understand and research causes and effects of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. While part of literature has focused on the economic effects of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, another line of research is studying the main drivers behind this costly pandemic. Which factors are associated with outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its intensity and human costs?

The current study on "Ageing Society and SARS-CoV-2 Mortality: Does the Healthcare Absorptive Capacity Matter?" by Mohamamd Reza Farzanegan focuses on the role of demographic structure of countries as a possible explanatory factor for outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 and associated human costs. The main contribution of this study is the consideration of the moderating role of healthcare absorptive capacity in shaping the final effect of old-age demographic structure on COVID-19. While there is a growing discussion on the importance of age structure in the level of COVID-19 costs, an empirical investigation of the conditional effect of old-age demographic structure at different levels of healthcare absorptive capacity of countries is missing in the COVID-19 literature.

It shows that the elderly population is robustly associated with higher COVID-19 mortality. This effect, however, decreases significantly in countries with higher health care absorptive capacity. The results are robust to control for a set of economic, institutional and regional variables.

This study is now avaibale open access in Journal of Risk and Financial Management via https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13110277

This article belongs to the Special Issue Political Economy of Natural Disasters.