Decomposing changes in life expectancy: Compression versus shifting mortality

Bergeron-Boucher, Marie-Pier; Ebeling, Marcus; Canudas-Romo, Vladimir

doi:10.4054/demres.2000.3.14

Cited by 15 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…An important measure of longevity used to understand mortality changes is the old modal age at death (Bergeron-Boucher et al 2015;Canudas-Romo 2008;Cheung et al 2005;Horiuchi et al 2013;Missov et al 2015). Model (4) identifies three different modes: I related to infant mortality, m for accidental and premature component, and M the adult modal age at death.…”

Section: Demographic Interpretation Of the Parametersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Mixture-Function Mortality Model: Illustration of the Evolution of Premature Mortality

2020

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Premature mortality is often a neglected component of overall deaths, and the most difficult to identify. However, it is important to estimate its prevalence. Following Pearson's theory about mortality components, a definition of premature deaths and a parametric model to study its transformations are introduced. The model is a mixture of three distributions: a Half Normal for the first part of the death curve and two Skew Normals to fit the remaining pieces. One advantage of the model is the possibility of obtaining an explicit equation to compute life expectancy at birth and to break it down into mortality components. We estimated the mixture model for Sweden, France, East Germany and Czech Republic. In addition, to the well-known reduction in infant deaths, and compression and shifting trend of adult mortality, we were able to study the trend of the central part of the distribution of deaths in detail. In general, a right shift of the modal age at death for young adults is observed; in some cases, it is also accompanied by an increase in the number of deaths at these ages: in particular for France, in the last twenty years, premature mortality increases.

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Section: Demographic Interpretation Of the Parametersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Mixture-Function Mortality Model: Illustration of the Evolution of Premature Mortality

2020

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“…Because capturing mortality delay and compression can provide insight into adult mortality trends, it is desirable for a mortality model to have this ability (de Beer and Janssen 2016; Basellini et al 2016;Bergeron-Boucher et al 2015). As the LC model cannot decompose the compression and delay effect, it cannot identify the influence of compression and delay in life expectancy improvements.…”

Section: Qualitative Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting delay and compression of mortality

Bardoutsos

Beer

Janssen

2018

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Background: Although mortality delay (the shift of the age-at-death distribution to older ages) and mortality compression (less variability in the age at death) are the key dynamics that drove past mortality trends, they have seldom been included in mortality projections. Objective: We compare the projections of a new parametric mortality model that captures delay and compression of mortality (CoDe) with projections based on the well-known Lee-Carter (LC) model. Data and methods: We compare the two models' properties and in-sample and out-of-sample performance using data from 1960 to 2014 for French, Japanese, and American women and men. Results: The CoDe model has less parameters to describe the shape of the age pattern, but more parameters to describe the changes in the age pattern, provides extrapolation to higher ages, allows to estimate the modal age at death, does not assume the exponential decline of rates across all ages, decomposes the delay and compression effect, and can serve as a diagnostic tool. While the LC model provides a better fit at younger ages, the CoDe model provides a better fit at older ages. The LC model consistently projects a slowdown of mortality delay and thus of the increase in life expectancy at birth, whereas the CoDe model can project a continuation of delay and thus a steady increase in life expectancy. Conclusion: Projecting mortality by including mortality delay and compression can result in better forecast performance than using the LC model, especially when the modal age at death increases linearly.

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“…Within mortality research, a paradigm shift has occurred: rather than studying trends in the expected average age at death, or life expectancy at birth (e0), researchers are increasingly studying changes over time in the full age-at-death distribution. To describe the changes over time in the age-at-death distribution, two scenarios have been distinguished, which, empirically, can operate simultaneously (Kannisto 2001): (1) mortality compression (Fries 1980), which results from more people dying at the same ages and is indicative of declining lifespan variability or declining lifespan disparities (Bergeron-Boucher et al 2015); and (2) mortality delay, or the shifting of mortality, whereby the shape of the age-at-death distribution remains intact but shifts to the right, which results in higher ages at death (Kannisto 2001;Bongaarts 2005;Canudas-Romo 2008;Vaupel 2010). Whereas mortality delay results from a decline in mortality across all ages, differences in the rates of decline across ages will cause a change in the shape of the age pattern of mortality: either mortality compression or, sometimes, even mortality expansion (increasing lifespan variability).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By means of decomposition techniques, changes in life expectancy can be decomposed into mortality compression and mortality delay (Rossi et al 2013;Bergeron-Boucher et al 2015;de Beer and Janssen 2016). Examining the relative roles of these two types of change and of the potential changes in these developments over time provides us with crucial information not only about the determinants of past mortality trends but also about future trends in both the average and the maximum human lifespan.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The timing of the transition from mortality compression to mortality delay in Europe, Japan and the United States

Janssen

Beer

2019

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Previous research found evidence for a transition from mortality compression (declining lifespan variability) to mortality delay (increasing ages at death) in low-mortality countries. We specifically assessed the year at which increases in life expectancy at birth transitioned from being predominantly due to mortality compression to being predominantly due to mortality delay in 26 European countries, Japan, and the United States of America (USA), 1950-2014. To unsmoothed age-and sex-specific death rates from the Human Mortality Database, we applied the CoDe (compression and delay) mortality model. Among women, the transition first occurred in the USA around 1950, then in NorthWestern Europe (1955-1970) and Southern Europe (1970-1975), and still later in Eastern Europe. Among men, the transition occurred about 10 years later and is still incomplete in Eastern Europe. We identified four stages: (1) predominance of compression mainly due to mortality declines at young ages, (2) declining importance of mortality compression due to the decreasing impact of mortality declines at young ages, (3) delay becomes predominant due to the increasing impact of mortality delay and the counterbalancing effects of mortality compression/expansion at different ages, and (4) strong predominance of delay accompanied by strong adult mortality declines and declining compression at old ages. Our results suggest that life expectancy and maximum lifespan will increase further. With mortality delay, premature mortality and old-age mortality are shifting towards older ages.

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Decomposing changes in life expectancy: Compression versus shifting mortality

Cited by 15 publications

References 34 publications

A Mixture-Function Mortality Model: Illustration of the Evolution of Premature Mortality

A Mixture-Function Mortality Model: Illustration of the Evolution of Premature Mortality

Projecting delay and compression of mortality

The timing of the transition from mortality compression to mortality delay in Europe, Japan and the United States

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