Volume 13 - Article 3 | Pages 63–82  

Age-specific contributions to changes in the period and cohort life expectancy

By Vladimir Canudas-Romo, Robert Schoen

Abstract

Period life expectancy has increased more slowly than its cohort counterpart. This paper explores the differences between life expectancies at a given time (the gap) and the time required for period life expectancy to reach the current level of cohort life expectancy (the lag). Additionally, to understand the disparity between the two life expectancies we identify and compare age-specific contributions to change in life expectancy. Using mortality models and historical data for Sweden, we examine the effect of mortality changes over time.
Our results indicate that the widening of the gap between the two life expectancies is primarily a consequence of the dramatic mortality decline at older ages that occurred during the twentieth century. These results imply that the divergence between the two measures is likely to become even greater in the future as reductions in deaths are concentrated at older ages.

Author’s Affiliation

• Vladimir Canudas-Romo - Australian National University, Australia EMAIL
• Robert Schoen - Pennsylvania State University, United States of America EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

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

Fertility quantum and tempo with cubic age-specific birth rates
Volume 51 - Article 42

Subnational contribution to life expectancy and life span variation changes: Evidence from the United States
Volume 50 - Article 22

Analyzing hyperstable population models
Volume 49 - Article 37

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

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

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

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

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

A dynamic birth-death model via Intrinsic Linkage
Volume 28 - Article 35

Age-specific growth, reproductive values, and intrinsic r
Volume 24 - Article 33

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

The metastable birth trajectory
Volume 21 - Article 25

A behaviorally-based approach to measuring inequality
Volume 19 - Article 49

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

Intrinsically dynamic population models
Volume 12 - Article 3

A diminishing population whose every cohort more than replaces itself
Volume 9 - Article 6

Estimating multistate transition rates from population distributions
Volume 9 - Article 1

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

On the Impact of Spatial Momentum
Volume 6 - Article 3

Toward a General Model for Populations with Changing Rates
Volume 4 - Article 6

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Life expectancy by religious affiliation in Finland 1972–2020
Volume 52 - Article 17    | Keywords: Finland, life expectancy, register data, religious affiliation

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality in Uruguay from 2020 to 2022
Volume 51 - Article 29    | Keywords: COVID-19, excess mortality, life expectancy, Uruguay

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

Makeham mortality models as mixtures: Advancing mortality estimations through competing risks frameworks
Volume 51 - Article 18    | Keywords: background mortality, competing risks, Makeham, mixture model, mortality models, senescent 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