Volume 30 - Article 49 | Pages 1397–1404
Entropy of the Gompertz-Makeham mortality model
Date received: | 12 Nov 2013 |
Date published: | 06 May 2014 |
Word count: | 650 |
Keywords: | Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality, life table entropy |
DOI: | 10.4054/DemRes.2014.30.49 |
Weblink: | All publications in the ongoing Special Collection 8 "Formal Relationships" can be found at http://www.demographic-research.org/special/8/ |
Abstract
Background: Life table entropy is a quantity frequently used in demography; e.g., as a measure of heterogeneity in age at death, or as the elasticity of life expectancy with regards to proportional changes in age-specific mortality. It is therefore instructive to calculate its value for the widely used Gompertz-Makeham mortality model.
Objective: I present and prove a simple expression of life table entropy for the Gompertz-Makeham model, which ties together the parameters of the model with demographically relevant quantities.
Comments: The relationship shows that entropy is easily calculated from the parameters of the given model, life expectancy and the average age in the stationary population. The latter enters the equation only if the Makeham term c is different from zero.
Author's Affiliation
Tomasz Wrycza - Max-Planck-Institut für Demografische Forschung, Germany
Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research
»
The pace of aging: Intrinsic time scales in demography
Volume 30 - Article 57
»
Variance in age at death equals average squared remaining life expectancy at death
Volume 30 - Article 50
»
How life expectancy varies with perturbations in age-specific mortality
Volume 27 - Article 13
Similar articles in Demographic Research
»
Unobserved population heterogeneity: A review of formal relationships
Volume 31 - Article 22 | Keywords: Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality
»
Variance in age at death equals average squared remaining life expectancy at death
Volume 30 - Article 50 | Keywords: life table entropy
Articles
Citations
Cited References: 20
»View the references of this article
Download to Citation Manager
Similar Articles
PubMed
Google Scholar