Volume 30 - Article 49 | Pages 1397–1404

Entropy of the Gompertz-Makeham mortality model

By Tomasz Wrycza

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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 [Email]

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

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