Volume 13 - Article 5 | Pages 117–142
Changing mortality and average cohort life expectancy
Date received: | 23 Feb 2005 |
Date published: | 05 Oct 2005 |
Word count: | 3743 |
Keywords: | cohort life expectancy, cross-sectional average length of life (CAL), life expectancy, mortality, mortality tempo, period life expectancy |
DOI: | 10.4054/DemRes.2005.13.5 |
Abstract
Period life expectancy varies with changes in mortality, and should not be confused with the life expectancy of those alive during that period. Given past and likely future mortality changes, a recent debate has arisen on the usefulness of the period life expectancy as the leading measure of survivorship. An alternative aggregate measure of period mortality which has been seen as less sensitive to period changes, the cross-sectional average length of life (CAL) has been proposed as an alternative, but has received only limited empirical or analytical examination.
Here, we introduce a new measure, the average cohort life expectancy (ACLE), to provide a precise measure of the average length of life of cohorts alive at a given time. To compare the performance of ACLE with CAL and with period and cohort life expectancy, we first use population models with changing mortality. Then the four aggregate measures of mortality are calculated for England and Wales, Norway, and Switzerland for the years 1880 to 2000. CAL is found to be sensitive to past and present changes in death rates. ACLE requires the most data, but gives the best representation of the survivorship of cohorts present at a given time.
Author's Affiliation
Robert Schoen - Pennsylvania State University, United States of America
Vladimir Canudas-Romo - Australian National University, Australia
Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research
»
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
»
Age-specific contributions to changes in the period and cohort life expectancy
Volume 13 - Article 3
»
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
»
Mortality tempo-adjustment: An empirical application
Volume 15 - Article 21 | Keywords: life expectancy, mortality, mortality tempo
»
Age-specific contributions to changes in the period and cohort life expectancy
Volume 13 - Article 3 | Keywords: cohort life expectancy, life expectancy, period life expectancy
»
Life expectancy loss among Native Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic
Volume 47 - Article 9 | Keywords: life expectancy, mortality
»
The contribution of smoking-attributable mortality to differences in mortality and life expectancy among US African-American and white adults, 2000–2019
Volume 46 - Article 31 | Keywords: life expectancy, mortality
»
Mexican mortality 1990‒2016: Comparison of unadjusted and adjusted estimates
Volume 44 - Article 30 | Keywords: life expectancy, mortality
Articles
Citations
Download to Citation Manager
Similar Articles
PubMed
»Articles by Vladimir Canudas-Romo
Google Scholar
»Articles by Vladimir Canudas-Romo