Volume 50 - Article 22 | Pages 583–624  

Subnational contribution to life expectancy and life span variation changes: Evidence from the United States

By Wen Su, Alyson van Raalte, Jose Manuel Aburto, Vladimir Canudas-Romo

Abstract

Background: The US life expectancy has been stagnating in recent decades, and along with this, the time trends of life span variation have shown stagnation and even increases with respect to historical levels.

Objective: We aim to disentangle contributions from subnational levels (US regions) to national changes in life expectancy and life span variation in 2010–2019 and 2019–2020.

Methods: A decomposition of the change in the national life expectancy and life disparity into the contribution of changing mortality and population structure among subnational regions is presented. The US Census regions are the Midwest, Northeast, South, and West.

Results: From 2010 to 2019, the South substantially contributed to the life span variation increase due to increasing mortality contributions. The old-age survival improvements across all regions further contributed to increasing life span variation at the national level. Different population growth patterns across regions, especially at older ages, are a further source of change in national life span variation and life expectancy. From 2019 to 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase in life span variation and a decrease in life expectancy across all regions were observed.

Contribution: We present continuous-time decompositions for changes in life expectancy and life span variation. When decomposing subnational contributions to national changes, we also demonstrate the role of the composition effect through subnational–national growth differences. This paper quantifies and highlights the specific contributions of regions and age groups to the national mortality increase in the United States between 2010 and 2019, as well as between 2019 and 2020.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Variable-r in sex ratios: Formulas in honor of Jim Vaupel
Volume 49 - Article 26

How lifespan and life years lost equate to unity
Volume 50 - Article 24

Dynamics of the coefficient of variation of the age at death distribution
Volume 49 - Article 38

Comparative evidence of years lived with reproductive-age morbidity in sub-Saharan Africa (2010‒2019)
Volume 49 - Article 6

Leveraging deep neural networks to estimate age-specific mortality from life expectancy at birth
Volume 47 - Article 8

Divergent trends in lifespan variation during mortality crises
Volume 46 - Article 11

The role of reductions in old-age mortality in old-age population growth
Volume 44 - Article 44

Mexican mortality 1990‒2016: Comparison of unadjusted and adjusted estimates
Volume 44 - Article 30

Lexis fields
Volume 42 - Article 24

APC curvature plots: Displaying nonlinear age-period-cohort patterns on Lexis plots
Volume 41 - Article 42

Geofaceting: Aligning small-multiples for regions in a spatially meaningful way
Volume 41 - Article 17

Is the age difference between partners related to women's earnings?
Volume 41 - Article 15

The threshold age of the lifetable entropy
Volume 41 - Article 4

Expected years ever married
Volume 38 - Article 47

Coherent forecasts of mortality with compositional data analysis
Volume 37 - Article 17

Decomposing changes in life expectancy: Compression versus shifting mortality
Volume 33 - Article 14

The Gompertz force of mortality in terms of the modal age at death
Volume 32 - Article 36

The role of smoking on mortality compression: An analysis of Finnish occupational social classes, 1971-2010
Volume 32 - Article 20

Cause-specific measures of life years lost
Volume 29 - Article 41

The crossover between life expectancies at birth and at age one: The imbalance in the life table
Volume 24 - Article 4

No consistent effects of prenatal or neonatal exposure to Spanish flu on late-life mortality in 24 developed countries
Volume 22 - Article 20

An integrated approach to cause-of-death analysis: cause-deleted life tables and decompositions of life expectancy
Volume 19 - Article 35

The modal age at death and the shifting mortality hypothesis
Volume 19 - Article 30

Changing mortality and average cohort life expectancy
Volume 13 - Article 5

Age-specific contributions to changes in the period and cohort life expectancy
Volume 13 - Article 3

Decomposing demographic change into direct vs. compositional components
Volume 7 - Article 1

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

On the relationship between life expectancy, modal age at death, and the threshold age of the life table entropy
Volume 51 - Article 24    | Keywords: Gompertz law, life expectancy, lifespan variation, longevity, mode, mortality

Two-dimensional contour decomposition: Decomposing mortality differences into initial difference and trend components by age and cause of death
Volume 50 - Article 41    | Keywords: decomposition methods, mortality

Standardized mean age at death (MADstd): Exploring its potentials as a measure of human longevity
Volume 50 - Article 30    | Keywords: formal demography, life expectancy, mean age at death, mortality, standardization

How lifespan and life years lost equate to unity
Volume 50 - Article 24    | Keywords: life expectancy, life table entropy, life years lost, lifespan variation

Mortality inequalities at retirement age between migrants and non-migrants in Denmark and Sweden
Volume 50 - Article 18    | Keywords: immigration, life expectancy, lifespan inequality, Nordic countries, pension age, pension policy