Heather Booth
Rob Hyndman
Leonie Tickle
Piet de Jong

http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol15/9/

doi:10.4054/DemRes.2006.15.9

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Abstract
We compare the short- to medium-term accuracy of five variants or extensions of the Lee-Carter method for mortality forecasting. These include the original Lee-Carter, the Lee-Miller and Booth-Maindonald-Smith variants, and the more flexible Hyndman-Ullah and De Jong-Tickle extensions. These methods are compared by applying them to sex-specific populations of 10 developed countries using data for 1986-2000 for evaluation. All variants and extensions are more accurate than the original Lee-Carter method for forecasting log death rates, by up to 61%. However, accuracy in log death rates does not necessarily translate into accuracy in life expectancy. There are no significant differences among the five methods in forecast accuracy for life expectancy.

Author's affiliation
Heather Booth
Australian National University, Australia
Rob Hyndman
Monash University, Australia
Leonie Tickle
Macquarie University, Australia
Piet de Jong
Macquarie University, Australia

Keywords
functional data, Lee-Carter method, mortality forecasting, nonparametric smoothing, principal components, state space

Word count (Main text)
5900

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