Causes of death behind the excess of women between 40 and 50 years old

In February of this year we published on the excess mortality at a specific age group in women in the past year, namely the group of 40 to 50 years. Based on 10-year linear extrapolation from the 2010-2019 period, we had calculated that the excess in this group was completed 30% in 2024.

At that time, however, it was not yet clear what causes of death were mainly responsible for this. In the meantime, at the beginning of July 2025, CBS has published the causes of death per five -year group of five years (and men and women separately). We have analyzed that data and have found two important causes of death that cause this high over mortality. What they are, more about that later.

For the total number of deaths, the figure below gives an impression of the excess per age group of 10 years for women (NB The first runs up to 30 years due to low number of deaths at a young age and the latter takes all people who are 80 years old or older.) The numbers of 2024 are related to those of the previous years with large excess 2020 to 2023. For each death. We see the percentage increase (and very occasionally also a decrease) compared to the baseline (in other words: absolute number of excess mortality divided by baseline x 100%).

Each group of bars therefore reflects the 2020-2024. In the age groups under the age of 50, the last bar (the brown) is always the longest. Although the numbers are relatively small, the trend is unmistakable.

Total number per cause of death in women

When we look at all ages then we see that 50% of normal mortality consists of the causes of death neoplasms (cancer) and cardiovascular diseases together (middle column in table 1)

But the distribution in the age group 40 to 50 years looks very different, see the right column in the table below. New formations are responsible for roughly half of the deaths, while cardiovascular disease is a much less important cause in this group.

Table 1.

Excess mortality

We are now going to look at the excess per death of death, or the difference between the actual and expected death (baseline) per cause of death. With the help of linear regression, we have determined the baseline for every cause of death. Of all causes of death together, the baseline is equal to 879, while the actual death is 1,133 people in this group, a difference of 254 (almost 30%).

This number appears to be built up as follows:

We now see that the greatest excess occurs with "other causes of death", immediately followed by cardiovascular disease. A reader who has been here more often knows that something is going on. This is because there is a large backlog in the cause of death forms at CBS. The majority of overdolution is explained by this phenomenon in this category. It is likely that around 71 forms have not been received more than expected. These 71 deaths have causes of death that may belong to all categories. We have assumed that the causes of death are also divided in the same way within the non-reception forms as the actual known mortality. That means that of those 71 deaths, 62 must be moved to another category. Most end up with Nieuws, since more than half of all real mortality this cause of death.

The corrections per cause of death can be found in the following table in the middle column, the total excess per death in the right column:

In terms of numbers, new formations and cardiovascular diseases for approximately 1/3 contribute to the total excess mortality. But we have also seen that in this group the number of deaths due to new forms is approximately 8x as large as cardiovascular disease. The high number in the latter category therefore implies one Very high percentage Out mortality. We can therefore see how large the corrected excess mortality is compared to the baseline for this group:

Totally it was just below 30%. The excess mortality is still somewhat limited because the cause that has the most weight, new formations, has a "modest" excess. There are four causes of death that are well above here, with the highest, cardiovascular disease even scoring considerably more than 100%.

Now this calculation stands or falls with the distraction of the baseline per cause of death. We can imagine that other research groups come up with other expectations for the causes of death. But we cannot imagine that the excess mortality in cardiovascular disease will disappear in its entirety due to a responsible choice of another baseline. We cannot say that "the" excess in cardiovascular disease in this group is 145%. But it must be a serious indication for "science" that something is really wrong here, that screams for further investigation.

And the men? Or together?

So far we have only looked at the women, because the excess mortality is much more spread over the age groups. However, if you also make the picture of the excess mortality for cardiovascular disease, then some alarm bells will ring if you want to hear them. The left figure shows the excess mortality in cardiovascular disease in women, the right figure in men:

In contrast to the women, it is among the men the 30-40 year group that shows the highest percentage excess in 2024 (and that was already the case in 2023).

If you then add over mortality in men and women, the following image will arise in cardiovascular disease:

The conclusion is then that, especially in the younger groups (30 - 60), overdolution is quite large in a percentage sense and is also larger in 2024 than in each of the other years.

Conclusion

You can look at the excess mortality in two ways, at absolute numbers or at the percentage differences with the baseline. For women between 40 and 50 years old we see that in absolute numbers the overdiction of new formations and cardiovascular disease is roughly the same, but if you look at the increase in the percentage sense, then in this group it is much greater in this group.

In men, too, the percentage overdfts in cardiovascular disease appears to peak, but there we see the highest values in the group 30- 40.