Word Frequency in U.S. Obituaries

Post #644

Dr.

Pierre Kory, MD, MPA

cross-posted another’s investigation looking into the rise in the use of the words “suddenly” and “unexpectedly” in U.S. obituaries. At the cross-post, you get to see how to obtain the data from the search site.

Here is the total number for 2021:

To extend the original analysis by John Beaudoin, I’ve included one year prior to the original timeline, and report counts, percentages, and rates.

Here is the raw count of the use of either word in U.S. obituaries:

The time intervals at bottom include all of a year, plus one extra day from the following year (366-day intervals). From the low-point at 2019 — when 40,000 U.S. obituaries used either the word “suddenly” or “unexpectedly” — the count for 2021 was essentially double.

Here is the proportion, as a percentage, of all obituaries that included either word:

In percentage terms, 2022 was the worst year. When the raw count of instances of something is well into the tens of thousands (like the first graph showed), then a single percentage-point increase is highly-signficant (p-value < 0.0001) and it would not be found to occur by chance even 1 time in 10,000.

The high statistical significance of the increased proportion means that “something” was causing more people to die “suddenly” or “unexpectedly.”

Here is the number of obituaries containing one of the two words for each 100,000 in the U.S. population (population data only went up to 2022 this time):

From the low rate in 2019 (12.2 obituaries per 100,000), the rate essentially doubled in 2021 (23.6 obituaries per 100,000), which was also highly significant (just like the percentage was). This indicates that almost twice of us die unexpectedly now.

Here are the raw data utilized in order to make these charts, with cell O12 clicked so that you can see the formula used (in top white bar) in order to get the rate:

[Click chart to enlarge]

Reference

[obituary search site] — Legacy. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/search

[U.S. population] — World Bank, Population, Total for United States [POPTOTUSA647NWDB], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTOTUSA647NWDB