IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/demogr/v54y2017i4d10.1007_s13524-017-0599-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decomposing Current Mortality Differences Into Initial Differences and Differences in Trends: The Contour Decomposition Method

Author

Listed:
  • Dmitri A. Jdanov

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
    National Research University Higher School of Economics)

  • Vladimir M. Shkolnikov

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
    National Research University Higher School of Economics)

  • Alyson A. van Raalte

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research)

  • Evgeny M. Andreev

    (National Research University Higher School of Economics)

Abstract

This study proposes a new decomposition method that permits a difference in an aggregate measure at a final time point to be split into additive components corresponding to the initial differences in the event rates of the measure and differences in trends in these underlying event rates. For instance, when studying divergence in life expectancy, this method allows researchers to more easily contrast age-specific mortality trends between populations by controlling for initial age-specific mortality differences. Two approaches are assessed: (1) an additive change method that uses logic similar to cause-of-death decomposition, and (2) a contour decomposition method that extends the stepwise replacement algorithm along an age-period demographic contour. The two approaches produce similar results, but the contour method is more widely applicable. We provide a full description of the contour replacement method and examples of its application to life expectancy and lifetime disparity differences between the United States and England and Wales in the period 1980–2010.

Suggested Citation

  • Dmitri A. Jdanov & Vladimir M. Shkolnikov & Alyson A. van Raalte & Evgeny M. Andreev, 2017. "Decomposing Current Mortality Differences Into Initial Differences and Differences in Trends: The Contour Decomposition Method," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(4), pages 1579-1602, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:54:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s13524-017-0599-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s13524-017-0599-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13524-017-0599-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13524-017-0599-6?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Preston, S.H. & Stokes, A., 2011. "Contribution of obesity to international differences in life expectancy," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 101(11), pages 2137-2143.
    2. Vladimir Shkolnikov & Evgeny M. Andreev & Alexander Begun, 2003. "Gini coefficient as a life table function," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 8(11), pages 305-358.
    3. Evgeny M. Andreev & Vladimir Shkolnikov & Alexander Begun, 2002. "Algorithm for decomposition of differences between aggregate demographic measures and its application to life expectancies, healthy life expectancies, parity-progression ratios and total fertility rat," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 7(14), pages 499-522.
    4. Claudia Nau & Glenn Firebaugh, 2012. "A New Method for Determining Why Length of Life is More Unequal in Some Populations Than in Others," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(4), pages 1207-1230, November.
    5. Shiro Horiuchi & John Wilmoth & Scott Pletcher, 2008. "A decomposition method based on a model of continuous change," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 45(4), pages 785-801, November.
    6. J. Pollard, 1988. "On the decomposition of changes in expectation of life and differentials in life expectancy," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 25(2), pages 265-276, May.
    7. Vladimir Shkolnikov & Evgeny Andreev & Zhen Zhang & James Oeppen & James Vaupel, 2011. "Losses of Expected Lifetime in the United States and Other Developed Countries: Methods and Empirical Analyses," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(1), pages 211-239, February.
    8. Alyson Raalte & Hal Caswell, 2013. "Perturbation Analysis of Indices of Lifespan Variability," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(5), pages 1615-1640, October.
    9. John Wilmoth & Shiro Horiuchi, 1999. "Rectangularization revisited: Variability of age at death within human populations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 36(4), pages 475-495, November.
    10. Smits, Jeroen & Monden, Christiaan, 2009. "Length of life inequality around the globe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 1114-1123, March.
    11. Duncan Gillespie & Meredith Trotter & Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2014. "Divergence in Age Patterns of Mortality Change Drives International Divergence in Lifespan Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(3), pages 1003-1017, June.
    12. Michael Murphy, 2010. "Reexamining the Dominance of Birth Cohort Effects on Mortality," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 36(2), pages 365-390, June.
    13. Zhen Zhang & James W. Vaupel, 2009. "The age separating early deaths from late deaths," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-004, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    14. Anne Case & Angua Deaton, 2015. "Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century," Working Papers 15078.full.pdf, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    15. Ryan D. Edwards & Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2005. "Inequality in Life Spans and a New Perspective on Mortality Convergence Across Industrialized Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 31(4), pages 645-674, December.
    16. Evgeny M. Andreev & Vladimir M. Shkolnikov & Alexander Z. Begun, 2002. "Algorithm for decomposition of differences between aggregate demographic measures and its application to life expectancies, Gini coefficients, health expectancies, parity-progression ratios and total ," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2002-035, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    17. Eduardo Arriaga, 1984. "Measuring and explaining the change in life expectancies," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 21(1), pages 83-96, February.
    18. Zhen Zhang & James W. Vaupel, 2009. "The age separating early deaths from late deaths," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 20(29), pages 721-730.
    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. Vladimir M. Shkolnikov & Evgeny M. Andreev, 2017. "The decomposition of the difference between two healthy life expectancies: which formula is right?," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-016, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    2. Marina Vergeles, 2021. "Evolution Of Sex Gap In Life Expectancy Across High-Income Countries: Universal Patterns And Country-Specific Attributes," HSE Working papers WP BRP 98/SOC/2021, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    3. Michael Murphy, 2021. "Use of Counterfactual Population Projections for Assessing the Demographic Determinants of Population Ageing," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(1), pages 211-242, March.
    4. Viorela Diaconu & Alyson van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen, 2022. "Why we should monitor disparities in old-age mortality with the modal age at death," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-13, February.

    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. José M. Aburto & Alyson A. van Raalte, 2017. "Lifespan dispersion in times of life expectancy fluctuation: the case of Central and Eastern Europe," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-018, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    2. Alyson van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen & Mikko Myrskylä, 2014. "Lifespan Variation by Occupational Class: Compression or Stagnation Over Time?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 73-95, February.
    3. José Manuel Aburto & Alyson van Raalte, 2018. "Lifespan Dispersion in Times of Life Expectancy Fluctuation: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2071-2096, December.
    4. Jose Manuel Aburto & Jesús-Adrián Alvarez & Francisco Villavicencio & James W. Vaupel, 2019. "The threshold age of the lifetable entropy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(4), pages 83-102.
    5. Duncan Gillespie & Meredith Trotter & Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2014. "Divergence in Age Patterns of Mortality Change Drives International Divergence in Lifespan Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(3), pages 1003-1017, June.
    6. Aburto, José Manuel & Kristensen, Frederikke Frehr & Sharp, Paul, 2021. "Black-white disparities during an epidemic: Life expectancy and lifespan disparity in the US, 1980–2000," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    7. Alyson Raalte & Hal Caswell, 2013. "Perturbation Analysis of Indices of Lifespan Variability," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(5), pages 1615-1640, October.
    8. Serena Vigezzi & Jose Manuel Aburto & Iñaki Permanyer & Virginia Zarulli, 2022. "Divergent trends in lifespan variation during mortality crises," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 46(11), pages 291-336.
    9. Alyson van Raalte & Mikko Myrskylä & Pekka Martikainen, 2015. "The role of smoking on mortality compression," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(20), pages 589-620.
    10. Henrik Brønnum-Hansen & Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos Espiñeira & Camila Perera & Ingelise Andersen, 2023. "Trends in mortality patterns in two countries with different welfare models: comparisons between Cuba and Denmark 1955–2020," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 1-28, June.
    11. Joseph T. Lariscy & Claudia Nau & Glenn Firebaugh & Robert A. Hummer, 2016. "Hispanic-White Differences in Lifespan Variability in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(1), pages 215-239, February.
    12. Aburto, José Manuel & Basellini, Ugofilippo & Baudisch, Annette & Villavicencio, Francisco, 2022. "Drewnowski’s index to measure lifespan variation: Revisiting the Gini coefficient of the life table," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 1-10.
    13. Alyson A. van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen & Mikko Myrskylä, 2012. "Lifespan variation by occupational class: compression or stagnation over time?," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2012-010, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    14. Iñaki Permanyer & Jeroen Spijker & Amand Blanes & Elisenda Renteria, 2018. "Longevity and Lifespan Variation by Educational Attainment in Spain: 1960–2015," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2045-2070, December.
    15. Jos'e Manuel Aburto & Ugofilippo Basellini & Annette Baudisch & Francisco Villavicencio, 2021. "Drewnowski's index to measure lifespan variation: Revisiting the Gini coefficient of the life table," Papers 2111.11256, arXiv.org.
    16. Soumya Pal & Abhishek Singh & Kaushalendra Kumar, 2022. "Inequality in length of life in India: an empirical analysis," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 315-340, September.
    17. Francisco Goerlich, 2020. "Distributionally adjusted life expectancy as a life table function," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 43(14), pages 365-400.
    18. Vladimir Shkolnikov & Evgeny Andreev & Zhen Zhang & James Oeppen & James Vaupel, 2011. "Losses of Expected Lifetime in the United States and Other Developed Countries: Methods and Empirical Analyses," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(1), pages 211-239, February.
    19. Wen Su & Vladimir Canudas-Romo, 2024. "Cross-sectional Average Length of Life Entropy ( $${\mathcal{H}}_{\text{CAL}}$$ H CAL ): International Comparisons and Decompositions," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 40(1), pages 1-23, December.
    20. Michal Engelman & Hal Caswell & Emily Agree, 2014. "Why do lifespan variability trends for the young and old diverge? A perturbation analysis," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 30(48), pages 1367-1396.

    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:spr:demogr:v:54:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s13524-017-0599-6. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.