American retailers, which are closing at record pace: 2017 is on track for over 8,500 store closures, dwarfing the 6,200 that shut their doors during the recession-hit turbulence of 2008.

With American brands such as Sears and Macy’s shuttering hundreds of shopfronts alone, malls are struggling to find tenants. In a sign of the times, an Ohio mall that was the largest in the world is being transformed into an Amazon fulfilment centre.

An Institute of Local Self-Reliance report – published late last year before the 2017 retail apocalypse – calculated that Amazon has eliminated about 149,000 more jobs in retail than it has created in its warehouses. The company’s embrace of automation is anticipated to further increase that gap, including the roll out of cashier-free physical stores where customersof 3062 per million was now eighth, only Australia and Japan being lower.

The table also shows the rank order of the rates of average deaths for the two periods for every MDC and rank order for the Anglo-Welsh rates in each age band. The changing average rates were positively but not significantly correlated.

*Age bands:* In every MDC, except France and Spain, the 15--44-year-old male age band death rates fell substantially (\>20%), and for the 45--54 group every MDC declined substantially except Spain and Japan. England and Wales' rates had some of the biggest falls.

There were substantial declines amongst the 54--64-year-olds in England and Wales (29%), the Netherlands (25%), and Australia and Italy (22%), whilst England and Wales' and the Netherlands' 65--74-year-old male rates fell by 22% and 21%,