According to the Federal Statistical Office, around four percent fewer people died in 2023 than in the previous year. The number of deaths in the winter months of January and December was still noticeably high compared to the pre-Corona period.
In 2023, 1.02 million people died in Germany – around 45,000 fewer than in the previous year. That’s a four percent decrease in deaths, like that Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden announced.
Due to the increasing proportion of older people in the population, an annual increase in the number of deaths in Germany has been expected for more than 20 years. At the same time, life expectancy tended to increase – even before the start of the corona pandemic. “The effect of increasing life expectancy weakened the aging effect,” said the statisticians.
Increase in deaths in winter
In the pandemic years 2020 to 2022, the number of deaths was higher than in almost all previous years, and life expectancy fell. Starting from a correspondingly high level of 1.07 million deaths in 2022, the number of deaths in 2023 fell again compared to the previous year for the first time since 2019.
According to the Federal Office, in January 2023 the number of deaths in Germany was 14 percent above the mean value (median) for the years 2019 to 2022 for this month. A flu epidemic had peaked shortly before the turn of the year. The number of Covid-19 deaths also reached an interim maximum at this time.
What is the median?
The median is the value that lies exactly in the middle of a data series ordered by size. It is also called the central value because there is the same amount of data below it as above it. It has the advantage that the influence of individual extreme outliers on a statistic is reduced. The median should not be confused with the arithmetic mean, which simply calculates the average of all data.
As these waves of illness subsided, the overall number of deaths also fell at the beginning of 2023. As the year progressed, there were hardly any abnormalities in the number of deaths. At the end of the year, the numbers were still noticeably high compared to pre-pandemic times.