Excess Winter Mortality amongst oldest people

Excess Winter Mortality is a well studiest phenomenon, especially in UK, Europe and Australia.

Here we try to check if this result holds for the oldest people

In [1]:
# usual imports

import pandas
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
import calendar
In [2]:
# Read the oldest people dataset, parsing their birth and death dates as datetime
# Print the dataframe to see the results 
df = pandas.read_csv("~/Downloads/oldest-people.csv", parse_dates=[2, 3])
df
Out[2]:
Birthplace Name Born Died Deathplace
0 England (UK) Betsy Baker 1842-08-20 1955-10-24 U.S. (NE)
1 England (UK) Jennie Howell 1845-02-11 1956-12-16 U.S. (CA)
2 Denmark Anne Marie Carstenson 1849-01-24 1958-03-30 U.S. (NE)
3 U.S. (IN) Nancy Ryan 1849-09-05 1958-10-17 U.S. (IN)
4 Netherlands Christina Karnebeek-Backs 1849-10-02 1959-10-07 Netherlands
5 Norway Marie Olsen 1850-05-01 1959-11-24 Norway
6 U.S. (MI) Mary Kelly 1851-06-07 1964-12-30 U.S. (CA)
7 England (UK) Elizabeth Kensley 1855-05-12 1965-03-06 England (UK)
8 U.S. (TX) William Fullingim 1855-07-07 1965-08-06 U.S. (OK)
9 England (UK) Hannah Smith 1856-01-07 1966-01-10 England (UK)
10 England (UK) John Turner 1856-06-15 1968-03-21 England (UK)
11 South Africa Johanna Booysen 1857-01-17 1968-06-16 South Africa
12 Czechoslovakia Marie Bernatkova 1857-10-22 1969-05-04 Czechoslovakia
13 England (UK) Ada Roe 1858-02-06 1970-01-11 England (UK)
14 Spain Josefa Salas Mateo 1860-07-14 1973-02-27 Spain
15 England (UK) Alice Stevenson 1861-07-10 1973-08-18 England (UK)
16 N. Ireland (UK) Elizabeth Watkins[2] 1863-03-10 1973-10-31 N. Ireland (UK)
17 Japan Mito Umeta 1863-03-27 1975-05-31 Japan (Kumamoto)
18 Japan Niwa Kawamoto 1863-08-05 1976-11-16 Japan (Shiga)
19 U.S. (MO) Sophia De Muth [3] 1866-06-30 1977-12-02 U.S. (MO)
20 France Marie-Virginie Duhem 1866-08-02 1978-04-25 France
21 U.S. (IL) Fannie Thomas 1867-04-14 1981-01-22 U.S. (CA)
22 France Augustine Teissier 1869-01-02 1981-03-08 France
23 U.S. (NH) Nellie Spencer 1869-08-24 1982-11-13 U.S. (NJ)
24 U.S. (MO) Emma Wilson 1870-05-12 1983-10-13 U.S. (MO)
25 U.S. (VA) Mathew Beard[4] 1870-07-09 1985-02-16 U.S. (FL)
26 Germany (now Poland) [5] Augusta Holtz 1871-08-03 1986-10-21 U.S. (MO)
27 U.S. (CA) Mary McKinney 1873-05-30 1987-02-02 U.S. (CA)
28 England (UK) Anna Eliza Williams 1873-06-02 1987-12-27 Wales (UK)
29 U.S. (PA) Florence Knapp 1873-10-10 1988-01-11 U.S. (PA)
... ... ... ... ... ...
35 U.S. (MI) Maud Farris-Luse 1887-01-21 2002-03-18 U.S. (MI)
36 England (UK) Grace Clawson [7] 1887-11-15 2002-05-28 U.S. (FL)
37 Cape Verde (Portugal)[8] Adelina Domingues 1888-02-19 2002-08-21 U.S. (CA)
38 U.S. (NY) Mae Harrington 1889-01-20 2002-12-29 U.S. (NY)
39 Japan Yukichi Chuganji 1889-03-23 2003-09-28 Japan (Fukuoka)
40 Japan Mitoyo Kawate 1889-05-15 2003-11-13 Japan (Hiroshima)
41 Puerto Rico Ramona Trinidad Iglesias-Jordan[9] 1889-08-31 2004-05-29 Puerto Rico
42 Ecuador Maria Esther de Capovilla[10] 1889-09-14 2006-08-27 Ecuador
43 U.S. (TN) Elizabeth Bolden 1890-08-15 2006-12-11 U.S. (TN)
44 Puerto Rico Emiliano Mercado Del Toro 1891-08-21 2007-01-24 Puerto Rico
45 U.S. (NC) Emma Tillman 1892-11-22 2007-01-28 U.S. (CT)
46 Japan Yone Minagawa 1893-01-04 2007-08-13 Japan (Fukuoka)
47 U.S. (IN) Edna Parker 1893-04-20 2008-11-26 U.S. (IN)
48 Portugal Maria de Jesus 1893-09-10 2009-01-02 Portugal
49 U.S. (GA) Gertrude Baines 1894-04-06 2009-09-11 U.S. (CA)
50 Japan Kama Chinen 1895-05-10 2010-05-02 Japan (Okinawa)
51 France Eugenie Blanchard 1896-02-16 2010-11-04 France (St. Barts)
52 Brazil Maria Gomes Valentim [11] 1896-07-09 2011-06-21 Brazil
53 U.S. (TN) Besse Cooper 1896-08-26 2012-12-04 U.S. (GA)
54 Italy Dina Manfredini 1897-04-04 2012-12-17 U.S. (IA)
55 Japan Jiroemon Kimura 1897-04-19 2013-06-12 Japan (Kyoto)
56 Japan Misao Okawa 1898-03-05 2015-04-01 Japan (Osaka)
57 U.S. (AR) Gertrude Weaver 1898-07-04 2015-04-06 U.S. (AR)
58 U.S. (GA) Jeralean Talley 1899-05-23 2015-06-17 U.S. (MI)
59 U.S. (AL) Susannah Mushatt Jones 1899-07-06 2016-05-12 U.S. (NY)
60 Italy Emma Morano 1899-11-29 2017-04-15 Italy
61 British West Indies (now Jamaica) Violet Brown 1900-03-10 2017-09-15 Jamaica
62 Japan Nabi Tajima 1900-08-04 2018-04-21 Japan (Kagoshima)
63 Japan Chiyo Miyako 1901-05-02 2018-07-22 Japan (Kanagawa)
64 Japan Kane Tanaka 1903-01-02 NaT Japan (Fukuoka)

65 rows × 5 columns

In [3]:
# Extract the month they died

df['died_month'] = df.Died.dt.month
In [4]:
# Lookin at the dataset, we know that the only death which occured in soutern hemisphere 
# was in South Africa, so let us remove that
df = df[df["Deathplace"] != "South Africa"]
In [5]:
# Get the count of people, for each month

deaths_in_month_count = df['died_month'].value_counts().sort_index()
deaths_in_month_count
Out[5]:
1.0     7
2.0     3
3.0     5
4.0     6
5.0     6
6.0     4
7.0     1
8.0     6
9.0     3
10.0    6
11.0    7
12.0    9
Name: died_month, dtype: int64
In [6]:
# Display the chart
# Show the winter months in red, and others in Cyan

plt.figure(figsize=(16,8))
palette=["red"] * 3  +["cyan"] * 8 + ["red"] 
sns.barplot([el for el in calendar.month_name if el], deaths_in_month_count.values, palette=palette, saturation=0.6)
Out[6]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x10f113860>

It doesn't look like that there is any statistically sigificant higher excess winter mortality amongst the oldest people.