Is austerity a cause of slower improvements in mortality in high-income countries? A panel analysis

•Improving mortality trends stalled across high-income countries after c.2012.•Economic causes, in particular austerity, have been proposed as an explanation.•Austerity was widely implemented over the twenty years 2000–2019.•We found that most measures of austerity led to slower mortality improvement.•Austerity is an important explanation for the stalled mortality trends.