The Life Table: Modelling Survival and Death (European Studies of Population, 11)

Guillaume Wunsch, Michel Mouchart, Josianne Duchene This book is an outcome of the activities of the Working Group on Health, Morbidity, and Mortality Differentials of the European Association for Population Studies, which was chaired for some years by one of the present editors (G. Wunsch). In collaboration with the Institute of Statistics and the Institute of Demography of the University of Louvain, this Working Group held a workshop in Louvain-Ia-Neuve a few years ago on the use of life tables in Europe, taking into account problems of data collection, methods, and models. Some of the participants in the workshop were then invited by the present editors to improve, develop, or in some cases thoroughly modify their papers in order to transform them into chapters of a book on life tables. Though life tables are one of the oldest tools in demography, and every textbook on demographic methods deals with the topic of life table construction, few books have dealt with the subject in depth. It is the hope of the editors that the present volume will fulfill to some extent this need. Though primarily written by and for demographers, this book will also be of use to actuaries working in life insurance, and to epidemiologists dealing with morbidity and cause of death. Furthermore, a topic such as competing risks theory should also be of interest to statisticians. The Life Table covers various important issues in life table construction and use. G. Wunsch presents a non-technical overview of the life table in the first chapter. G. Calot and A. Franco then give a detailed account of the estimation of the probability of dying between two consecutive ages, taking migration and the distribution of population at risk into account. E. Valkovics compares various methods of decomposing the difference in life expectancies. J. Anson deals with the problem of finding suitable indicators summarising the age distribution of mortality. Two chapters, respectively by G. Caselli and by E. Tabeau, F. Willekens, and F. van Poppel, are devoted to age, period, and cohort effects in mortality. Three chapters then deal more specifically with mortality by cause of death. F. Meslé first discusses the problem of adequately registering these causes. A.E. Kunst, J.P. Mackenbach, H. Lautenbach, F.B. Oei, and F. Bijlsma examine the gains in life expectancy obtained by eliminating major causes of death, taking into account competing causes of death. J. Duchêne presents an introduction to multi-state morbidity-mortality models by cause. The competing risks model is thoroughly analysed by M. Mouchart and J.M. Rolin. E. Camboid and J.M. Robine show how the life table model can be extended for the assessment of the global health level of a population. The book ends with a concluding chapter by Jon Anson, which puts life table analysis in a broader sociological perspective Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-12 The life table: A demographic overview....Pages 13-31 The construction of life tables....Pages 33-78 Methods of decomposition of differences between life expectancies at birth by causes of death....Pages 79-94 Of entropies and inequalities: Summary measures of the age distribution of mortality....Pages 95-116 Age, period and cohort components in analysing past and projecting future mortality trends....Pages 117-140 Parameterisation as a tool in analysing age, period and cohort effects on mortality: A case study of the Netherlands....Pages 141-169 The registration of causes of death: Problems of comparability....Pages 171-190 Gains in life expectancy by eliminating major causes of death: Revised estimates taking into account competing causes of death....Pages 191-207 The measurement of mortality by cause and of morbidity....Pages 209-244 Competing risks models: Problems of modelling and of identification....Pages 245-267 Use of demographic tools in the assessment of the health level of populations....Pages 269-281 The life table: A sociological overview....Pages 283-303 Back Matter....Pages 305-307

This work covers various important issues in life table construction and use. It. includes a non-technical overview, compares various methods of decomposing the difference in life expectancies, discusses the finding of suitable indicators and models, and deals with age, period, and cohort effects in mortality.