The Demographics of Covid-19 in the European Union

This paper provides provisional descriptive evidence to answer two questions which relate to deaths due to to what extent variations in population sizes matter in EU countries? Can variations in deaths per capita (or people infected per capita) be explained by variations in population sizes? Second, does the economy matter? Can variations in total and per capita GDP explain variations in deaths per capita? Related is the issue of social spending. Can social spending explain variations in COVID-19 impacts? In answering these questions, data from EU member states are used. Simple stepwise descriptive statistical analyses show that population sizes and economies do matter in explaining the observed variations in COVID-19 impacts. It is found that only deaths per capita give meaningful and statistically significant results. This relation is non-linear. On average a one percent rise in population size increases deaths per capita by 0.49%.