Volume 24 - Article 21 | Pages 497–526
Variance in death and its implications for modeling and forecasting mortality
Date received: | 01 Aug 2010 |
Date published: | 22 Mar 2011 |
Word count: | 8007 |
Keywords: | entropy, inequality, proportional hazards |
DOI: | 10.4054/DemRes.2011.24.21 |
Abstract
The slope and curvature of the survivorship function reflect the considerable amount of variance in length of life found in any human population. This is due in part to the well-known variation in life expectancy between groups: large differences in race, sex, socioeconomic status, or other covariates. But within-group variance is large even in narrowly defined groups, and changes substantially and inversely with the group average length of life. We show that variance in length of life is inversely related to the Gompertz slope of log mortality through age, and we reveal its relationship to variance in a multiplicative frailty index. Our findings bear a variety of implications for modeling and forecasting mortality. In particular, we examine how the assumption of proportional hazards fails to account adequately for differences in subgroup variance, and we discuss how several common forecasting models treat the variance in the temporal dimension.
Author's Affiliation
Shripad Tuljapurkar - Stanford University, United States of America
Ryan Edwards - University of California, Berkeley, United States of America
Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research
»
Convergence in male and female life expectancy: Direction, age pattern, and causes
Volume 34 - Article 38
»
How can economic schemes curtail the increasing sex ratio at birth in China?
Volume 19 - Article 54
Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research
»
A behaviorally-based approach to measuring inequality
Volume 19 - Article 49 | Keywords: entropy, inequality
»
Reconsidering (in)equality in the use of IUDs in the United States: A closer look across the reproductive life course
Volume 43 - Article 35 | Keywords: inequality
»
Distributionally adjusted life expectancy as a life table function
Volume 43 - Article 14 | Keywords: inequality
»
Calloused hands, shorter life? Occupation and older-age survival in Mexico
Volume 42 - Article 32 | Keywords: inequality
»
Family arrangements and children’s educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school
Volume 40 - Article 35 | Keywords: inequality
Articles
Citations
Cited References: 42
»View the references of this article
Download to Citation Manager
Similar Articles
PubMed
»Articles by Shripad Tuljapurkar
Google Scholar
»Articles by Shripad Tuljapurkar