IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0198485.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Adequate life-expectancy reconstruction for adult human mortality data

Author

Listed:
  • László Németh
  • Trifon I Missov

Abstract

Mortality information of populations is aggregated in life tables that serve as a basis for calculation of life expectancy and various life disparity measures. Conventional life-table methods address right-censoring inadequately by assuming a constant hazard in the last open-ended age group. As a result, life expectancy can be substantially distorted, especially in the case when the last age group in a life table contains a large proportion of the population. Previous research suggests addressing censoring in a gamma-Gompertz-Makeham model setting as this framework incorporates all major features of adult mortality. In this article, we quantify the difference between gamma-Gompertz-Makeham life expectancy values and those published in the largest publicly available high-quality life-table databases for human populations, drawing attention to populations for which life expectancy values should be reconsidered. We also advocate the use of gamma-Gompertz-Makeham life expectancy for three reasons. First, model-based life-expectancy calculation successfully handles the problem of data quality or availability, resulting in severe censoring due to the unification of a substantial number of deaths in the last open-end age group. Second, model-based life expectancies are preferable in the case of data scarcity, i.e. when data contain numerous age groups with zero death counts: here, we provide an example of hunter-gatherer populations. Third, gamma-Gompertz-Makeham-based life expectancy values are almost identical to the ones provided by the major high-quality human mortality databases that use more complicated procedures. Applying a gamma-Gompertz-Makeham model to adult mortality data can be used to revise life-expectancy trends for historical populations that usually serve as input for mortality forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • László Németh & Trifon I Missov, 2018. "Adequate life-expectancy reconstruction for adult human mortality data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(6), pages 1-8, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0198485
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198485
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198485
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198485&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0198485?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Steinsaltz & Kenneth Wachter, 2006. "Understanding Mortality Rate Deceleration and Heterogeneity," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 19-37.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yaya OlaOluwa S. & Otekunrin Oluwaseun A. & Ogbonna Ahamuefula E., 2021. "Life expectancy in West African countries: Evidence of convergence and catching up with the north," Statistics in Transition New Series, Statistics Poland, vol. 22(1), pages 75-88, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Annamaria Olivieri & Ermanno Pitacco, 2016. "Frailty and Risk Classification for Life Annuity Portfolios," Risks, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-23, October.
    2. Adrian Raftery & Jennifer Chunn & Patrick Gerland & Hana Ševčíková, 2013. "Bayesian Probabilistic Projections of Life Expectancy for All Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(3), pages 777-801, June.
    3. MARK BEBBINGTON & CHIN-DIEW LAI & RIcARDAS ZITIKIS, 2011. "Modelling Deceleration in Senescent Mortality," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 18-37.
    4. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, 2020. "Multidimensional Mortality Selection: Why Individual Dimensions of Frailty Don’t Act Like Frailty," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(2), pages 747-777, April.
    5. Alberto Palloni & Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez, 2017. "Discrete Barker Frailty and Warped Mortality Dynamics at Older Ages," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(2), pages 655-671, April.
    6. Kenneth W. Wachter, 2008. "Biodemography comes of Age," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 19(40), pages 1501-1512.
    7. Maxim S. Finkelstein, 2009. "Understanding the shape of the mixture failure rate (with engineering and demographic applications)," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-031, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    8. Maxim S. Finkelstein, 2011. "On ordered subpopulations and population mortality at advanced ages," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2011-022, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    9. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, 2014. "Mortality Deceleration and Mortality Selection: Three Unexpected Implications of a Simple Model," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 51-71, February.
    10. Li, Ting & Anderson, James J., 2009. "The vitality model: A way to understand population survival and demographic heterogeneity," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 118-131.
    11. Finkelstein, Maxim, 2012. "On ordered subpopulations and population mortality at advanced ages," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 81(4), pages 292-299.
    12. Hartemink, Nienke & Missov, Trifon I. & Caswell, Hal, 2017. "Stochasticity, heterogeneity, and variance in longevity in human populations," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 107-116.
    13. Missov, Trifon I. & Finkelstein, Maxim, 2011. "Admissible mixing distributions for a general class of mixture survival models with known asymptotics," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 64-70.
    14. Cha, Ji Hwan & Finkelstein, Maxim, 2016. "Justifying the Gompertz curve of mortality via the generalized Polya process of shocks," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 54-62.
    15. Dennis M. Feehan, 2018. "Separating the Signal From the Noise: Evidence for Deceleration in Old-Age Death Rates," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2025-2044, December.
    16. Maxim Finkelstein, 2012. "Discussing the Strehler-Mildvan model of mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 26(9), pages 191-206.
    17. Maxim Finkelstein, 2009. "‘Understanding the shape of the mixture failure rate’ Rejoinder by Maxim Finkelstein," Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(6), pages 673-677, November.
    18. Kenneth Manton & Igor Akushevich & Alexander Kulminski, 2008. "Human Mortality at Extreme Ages: Data from the NLTCS and Linked Medicare Records," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 137-159.
    19. Maxim Finkelstein, 2009. "Understanding the shape of the mixture failure rate (with engineering and demographic applications)," Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(6), pages 643-663, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0198485. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.