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Recent studies have shown that there are some advantages to forecasting mortality with indicators other than age-specific death rates. The mean, median, and modal ages at death can be directly estimated from the age-at-death distribution, as can information on lifespan variation. The modal age at death has been increasing linearly since the second half of the twentieth century, providing a strong basis from which to extrapolate past trends. The aim of this paper is to develop a forecasting model that is based on the regularity of the modal age at death and that can also account for changes in lifespan variation. We forecast mortality at ages 40 and above in 10 West European countries. The model we introduce increases forecast accuracy compared with other forecasting models and provides consistent trends in life expectancy and lifespan variation at age 40 over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research documents the relevance of parental education as a marker of family socio-economic status for children’s later-life health outcomes. A strand of this literature evaluates how the early-life environment shapes mortality outcomes during infancy and childhood. However, the evidence on mortality during the life course and old age is limited. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the association between paternal education and children’s old-age mortality. We use data from Social Security Administration death records over the years 1988–2005 linked to the United States 1940 Census. Applying a family(cousin)- fixed-effects model to account for shared environment, childhood exposures, and common endowments that may confound the long-term links, we find that having a father with a college or high-school education, compared with elementary/no education, is associated with a 4.6- or 2.6-month-higher age at death, respectively, for the child, conditional on them surviving to age 47. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from theories of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) suggests that experiencing adverse early life conditions subsequently leads to detrimental adult health outcomes. The bulk of empirical DOHaD literature does not consider the nature and magnitude of the impact of adverse early life conditions at the population level. In particular, it ignores the distortion of age and cohort patterns of adult health and mortality and the increased load of chronic illness and disability that ensues. In this paper, we use a microsimulation model combined with empirical estimates of incidence and prevalence of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and associated disability in low- and middle-income countries to assess the magnitude of delayed effects on adult healthy life expectancy and on compression (or expansion) of morbidity at older ages. The main goal is to determine if, in what ways, and to what extent delayed effects due to early conditions can influence cohorts' chronic illness and disability profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine progress in the field of mortality over the past 25 years. I argue that we have been most successful in taking advantage of an increasingly data-rich environment to improve aggregate mortality models and test pre-existing theories. Less progress has been made in relating our estimates of mortality risk at the individual level to broader mortality patterns at the population level while appropriately accounting for contextual differences and compositional change. Overall, I find that the field of mortality continues to be highly visible in demographic journals, including Population Studies. However much of what is published today in field journals could just as easily appear in neighbouring disciplinary journals, as disciplinary boundaries are shrinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine progress in the field of mortality over the past 25 years. I argue that we have been most successful in taking advantage of an increasingly data-rich environment to improve aggregate mortality models and test pre-existing theories. Less progress has been made in relating our estimates of mortality risk at the individual level to broader mortality patterns at the population level while appropriately accounting for contextual differences and compositional change. Overall, I find that the field of mortality continues to be highly visible in demographic journals, including Population Studies. However much of what is published today in field journals could just as easily appear in neighbouring disciplinary journals, as disciplinary boundaries are shrinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite improvements in life expectancy, there is uncertainty on whether the increase in years of healthy life expectancy has kept pace. In this paper we explore whether there is empirical support for the expansion of morbidity hypothesis in the population aged 25–64 living in England. Nationally representative cohorts born between 1945 and 1980 are constructed from repeated annual cross-sections of the Health Survey for England, 1991–2014. Later-born cohorts at a given age have the same or higher prevalence of self-reported bad general health and long-term illness, self-reported high blood pressure (in men), self-reported and objectively-measured diabetes, circulatory illnesses, clinical hypertension, and overweight BMI. We also find that healthy life expectancies (in the sense of absence of each of these problems) at age 25 have increased at a slower pace than life expectancy between 1993 and 2013. Our findings lend support to the expansion of morbidity hypothesis and point to increased future demand for specific healthcare services at younger ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cohort life expectancy is an important but rarely used indicator of mean longevity. In this paper, we show that there are specific advantages in lagging this indicator in time by its own value, an approach termed Lagged Cohort Life Expectancy (LCLE). We discuss the usefulness of LCLE as an indicator for tracking progress in mean longevity and introduce a new interpretation of LCLE as a reference age separating 'early' deaths from 'late' deaths, or, equivalently, as the age above which individuals in a population can be considered 'above-average' survivors. Using data from 15 countries in the Human Mortality Database, we show that current LCLE can be estimated with a relatively high degree of certainty, at least in these low-mortality populations. Results shed new light on levels and trends in mean longevity in these populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age-at-death distributions provide an informative description of the mortality pattern of a population but have generally been neglected for modelling and forecasting mortality. In this paper, we use the distribution of deaths to model and forecast adult mortality. Specifically, we introduce a relational model that relates a fixed 'standard' to a series of observed distributions by a transformation of the age axis. The proposed Segmented Transformation Age-at-death Distributions (STAD) model is parsimonious and efficient: using only three parameters, it captures and disentangles mortality developments in terms of shifting and compression dynamics. Additionally, mortality forecasts can be derived from parameter extrapolation using time-series models. We illustrate our method and compare it with the Lee-Carter model and variants for females in four high-longevity countries. We show that the STAD fits the observed mortality pattern very well, and that its forecasts are more accurate and optimistic than the Lee-Carter variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘prospective potential support ratio’ has been proposed by researchers as a measure that accurately quantifies the burden of ageing, by identifying the fraction of a population that has passed a certain measure of longevity, for example, 17 years of life expectancy. Nevertheless, the prospective potential support ratio usually focuses on the current mortality schedule, or period life expectancy. Instead, in this paper we look at the actual mortality experienced by cohorts in a population, using cohort life tables. We analyse differences between the two perspectives using mortality models, historical data, and forecasted data. Cohort life expectancy takes future mortality improvements into account, unlike period life expectancy, leading to a higher prospective potential support ratio. Our results indicate that using cohort instead of period life expectancy returns around 0.5 extra younger people per older person among the analysed countries. We discuss the policy implications implied by our cohort measures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Forecasts of life expectancy (LE) have fuelled debates about the sustainability and dependability of pension and healthcare systems. Of relevance to these debates are inequalities in LE by education. In this paper, we present a method of forecasting LE for different educational groups within a population. As a basic framework we use the Li-Lee model that was developed to forecast mortality coherently for different groups. We adapted this model to distinguish between overall, sex-specific, and education-specific trends in mortality, and extrapolated these time trends in a flexible manner. We illustrate our method for the population aged 65 and over in the Netherlands, using several data sources and spanning different periods. The results suggest that LE is likely to increase for all educational groups, but that differences in LE between educational groups will widen. Sensitivity analyses illustrate the advantages of our proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing concern about the lack of accuracy in population projections at national levels. A common problem has been the systematic underestimation of improvements in mortality, especially at older ages, resulting in projections that are too low. In this paper, we present a method that is based on projecting survivorship rather than mortality, which uses the same data but differs technically. In particular, rather than extrapolating trends in mortality, we use trends in life expectancy to establish a robust statistical relation between changes in life expectancy and survivorship using period life tables. We test the approach on data for England and Wales for the population aged 50 and over, and show that it gives more accurate projections than official projections using the same base data. Using the model to project the population aged 50 and over to 2020, our method suggests nearly 0.6 million more people in this age group than official projections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mortality decline has historically been largely a result of reductions in the level of mortality at all ages. A number of leading researchers on ageing, however, suggest that the next revolution of longevity increase will be the result of slowing down the rate of ageing. In this paper, we show mathematically how varying the pace of senescence influences life expectancy. We provide a formula that holds for any baseline hazard function. Our result is analogous to Keyfitz's ‘entropy’ relationship for changing the level of mortality. Interestingly, the influence of the shape of the baseline schedule on the effect of senescence changes is the complement of that found for level changes. We also provide a generalized formulation that mixes level and slope effects. We illustrate the applicability of these models using recent mortality decline in Japan and the problem of period to cohort translation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The difference in life expectancy between women and men among Israeli Jews is very low relative to the difference in other developed countries, and the reasons for this are not fully understood. This paper explores the contribution of smoking to the observed patterns of sex-specific mortality among Israeli Jews, and to the sex difference in mortality exhibited by this population. The results show that the mortality of Israeli Jewish men is low owing to the relatively weak impact of smoking-related mortality, and that this also contributes to an explanation of the small sex difference. The result is explained by the high level of health-protective behaviour of Israeli Jewish men, including a low intensity of smoking (though not a low prevalence). The findings could have implications for some debates on the determinants of divergences and convergences in mortality, and research into the relationship between mortality and the Mediterranean diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinction between senescent and non-senescent mortality proves to be very valuable for describing and analysing age patterns of death rates. Unfortunately, standard methods for estimating these mortality components are lacking. The first part of this paper discusses alternative methods for estimating background and senescent mortality among adults and proposes a simple approach based on death rates by causes of death. The second part examines trends in senescent life expectancy (i.e., the life expectancy implied by senescent mortality) and compares them with trends in conventional longevity indicators between 1960 and 2000 in a group of 17 developed countries with low mortality. Senescent life expectancy for females rises at an average rate of 1.54 years per decade between 1960 and 2000 in these countries. The shape of the distribution of senescent deaths by age remains relatively invariant while the entire distribution shifts over time to higher ages as longevity rises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 2003, Western Europe experienced a deadly heat wave. It is estimated that 15,000 people died in France from its direct effects. Applying an indirect estimation technique to the monthly number of deaths by sex, age, and place of residence for the period 1996-2003, we estimate the number of years that would have remained to those who died from the heat wave had they been spared. The paper also evaluates the role of the 'harvesting' effect of the 2003 heat wave in explaining the deficit of deaths recorded in 2004 - estimated at 23,000 out of an expected total of 535,000 deaths. The harvesting effect was modest and accounted for fewer than 5,000 of the 'missing' deaths in 2004. The mortality decline in 2004 is thus due mainly to other factors. One hypothesis is that special efforts have been directed towards isolated older people as a consequence of the heat wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an empirical and analytic foundation for regarding period life expectancy as a lagged indicator of the experience of real cohorts in populations experiencing steady improvement in mortality. We find that current period life expectancy in the industrialized world applies to cohorts born some 40-50 years ago. Lags track an average age at which future years of life are being gained, in a sense that we make precise. Our findings augment Ryder's classic results on period-cohort translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from censuses and surveys to re-estimate mortality levels and trends in China from the 1960's to 2000. We use the General Growth Balance method to evaluate the completeness of death reporting above the youngest ages in three censuses of the People's Republic of China from 1982 to 2000, concluding that reporting quality is quite high, and revisit the completeness of death recording in the 1973-75 Cancer Epidemiology Survey. Estimates of child mortality from a variety of direct and indirect sources are reviewed, and best estimates arrived at. Our estimates show a spectacular improvement in life expectancy in China: from about 60 years in the period 1964-82 to nearly 70 years in the period 1990-2000, with a further improvement to over 71 years by 2000. We discuss why survival rates continue improving in China despite reduced government involvement in and increasing privatization of health services, with little insurance coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reply to a paper published in the previous issue of Population Studies. Author Zhongwei Zhao questions the uniqueness of a mortality pattern. Zhao assesses the degree of conformity to Far Eastern age pattern of mortality by computing and subsequently graphing, ratios of age specific probabilities of dying in an observed population to the corresponding probabilities in a standard. Given his interest in evaluating the Far Eastern patterns defined by the United Nations, he employs two standards: a Coale and Demeny West model life table and United Nations Far Eastern model life table. Based on the resulting graphs, Zhao concludes that mortality ratios for select Western countries are similar to those calculated for the Far Eastern ones, that is, they all display higher mortality at the older, relative to the younger, ages when compared with the Coale-Demeny model life table. There are two problems with this interface. First, as Zhao discusses, some of the schedules are characterized by life expectancies at birth that differ from the standard, thereby weakening the suitability of the ratio as a measure of an age patter. Second, there is in fact substantial variation across the patterns revealed by the schedules.

This paper presents a summary mortality index, the cross-sectional average length of life (CAL). By combining the mortality experience of various cohorts in a cross-sectional fashion, CAL complements traditional one-period or one-cohort indexes and enriches our understanding of population processes. First, CAL provides an alternative insight into the analysis of mortality. By taking into account the real mortality conditions to which individuals in a population have been subject, it tends to yield less favourable mortality levels than e0 and produces different rankings of mortality levels across countries. Second, CAL is a relevant index for the study of population dynamics. In particular, change in CAL over time shows the direct impact of mortality change on population growth, and the e0/CAL ratio for a given year shows the mortality-induced growth that can be expected given current mortality levels. It illustrates that mortality can play a non-negligible role in future population growth, even in the absence of future mortality improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1951 and 1998, the United Nations (UN) published 16 sets of population projections for the world, its major regions, and countries. This paper reports the accuracy of the projection results. I analyse the quality of the historical data used for the base populations of the projections, and for extrapolating fertility and mortality. I study also the impact this quality has had on the accuracy of the projection results. Results and assumptions for the sets of projections are compared with corresponding estimates from the UN 1998 Revision for total fertility and life expectancy at birth, total population, and the projected age structures. The report covers seven major regions (Africa, Asia, the former USSR, Europe, Northern America, Latin America, and Oceania) and the largest ten countries of the world as of 1998 (China, India, the USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, Japan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore mortality in Quebec during the nineteenth century from a demographic perspective. During the nineteenth century, there was excess urban mortality in various countries; in order to identify such mortality differentials, we compared mortality indicators for the province of Quebec and then for the urban areas of Montreal and Quebec City. Using data from various studies, we produced life tables and compared life expectancies. We show that at different times during the nineteenth century, spatial variations in mortality levels across the province of Quebec and its urban areas were significant. According to the data we analyzed, mortality is undoubtedly higher in urban areas even though a convergence in trends took place towards the end of the century, resulting in an overall reduction in mortality. Also, exploring life expectancies within a cohort approach at times of fast-changing mortality patterns has proved to be instructive. Life expectancy estimates based on a cross-sectional approach were systematically lower than those resulting from a cohort-specific one. Trends diverged to a greater extent beginning with the 1870 cohort, reflecting the improvements made from that point on to World War II. Since current mortality levels are substantially determined by the cumulative effects of past behaviour specific to each generation, it is quite obvious that mortality analysis will reveal its true meaning only with the help of cohort life tables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]