Friday excess of overall mortality in three German subpopulations

Abstract

AbstractWe studied variations of all-cause human mortality during the weekly cycle, using deathdates collected from death notices published in regional or local newspapers in three distinct regions in Germany (South Baden, North Bavaria, Saarland), total database sizeN≈ 44000. Probability distributions of death on different days of the week show significant (P= 0.0155) departures from the uniformity hypothesis. The day of maximum mortality is Friday (probability of dying = 0.148), whereas minimum mortality is observed on Sundays and Mondays (probability of dying = 0.140 for both days). This ‘Friday excess’ effect seems to be a novel phenomenon, unrelated to other findings on weekly modulation of human mortality.