Relative age-standardised mortality

Analysis from the Office for National Statistics compares European nations.

Anthony B. Masters
3 min readApr 12, 2022

In my co-written book Covid by Numbers, a graph shows relative age-standardised mortality. The graph in the book has a production error, where the UK lines do not have correct alignment. The original version, made in R, looks like:

(Image: Covid By Numbers)

What are relative age-standardised mortality rates? To calculate age-standardised mortality, we need to find mortality rates within age groups. Next, analysts calculate the weighted average of these age-specific rates. The weights come from a standard population, here: the 2013 European Standard population. This index is then

The Office for National Statistics updated their analysis. Now, we can update this graph. In the original version, I uploaded a spreadsheet containing the mortality statistics. This time, I want to draw straight from the online file. That helps make the code more reproducible.

To achieve that goal, I use the curl package:

temp <- tempfile()
temp <- curl_download(url = ons_rasmr_url, destfile = temp,
quiet = TRUE, mode = "wb")
ons_rasmr_tbl <- read_excel(temp,
sheet = ons_rasmr_sheet,
range = ons_rasmr_range)

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Anthony B. Masters
Anthony B. Masters

Written by Anthony B. Masters

This blog looks at the use of statistics in Britain and beyond. It is written by RSS Statistical Ambassador and Chartered Statistician @anthonybmasters.

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