IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/popdev/v40y2014i2p189-212.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trends in Causes of Death in Low-Mortality Countries: Implications for Mortality Projections

Author

Listed:
  • John Bongaarts

Abstract

type="main"> This study examines the potential role that information about trends in causes of death could have in improving projections of mortality in low-mortality countries. The article first summarizes overall trends in mortality by cause since the middle of the twentieth century. Special attention is given to the crucial impact of the smoking epidemic on mortality and on cause-of-death patterns. The article then discusses the implications for projections and reaches two conclusions. First, mortality projections can be improved by taking into account the distorting effects of smoking. Mortality attributable to smoking has risen in the past but has now leveled off or declined, thus boosting improvements in life expectancy. Second, making cause-specific projections is not likely to be helpful. Trends in specific medical causes of death have exhibited discontinuities in the past, and future trends are therefore difficult to predict.

Suggested Citation

  • John Bongaarts, 2014. "Trends in Causes of Death in Low-Mortality Countries: Implications for Mortality Projections," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 40(2), pages 189-212, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:popdev:v:40:y:2014:i:2:p:189-212
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00670.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Nan Li & Ronald Lee, 2005. "Coherent mortality forecasts for a group of populations: An extension of the lee-carter method," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 42(3), pages 575-594, August.
    2. Vladimir M. Shkolnikov & Dmitri A. Jdanov & Evgeny M. Andreev & James W. Vaupel, 2011. "Steep Increase in Best‐Practice Cohort Life Expectancy," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 37(3), pages 419-434, September.
    3. Colin D Mathers & Dejan Loncar, 2006. "Projections of Global Mortality and Burden of Disease from 2002 to 2030," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(11), pages 1-20, November.
    4. Fred C. Pampel, 2002. "Cigarette Use and the Narrowing Sex Differential in Mortality," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 28(1), pages 77-104, March.
    5. Fred Pampel, 2005. "Forecasting sex differences in mortality in high income nations," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 13(18), pages 455-484.
    6. Fanny Janssen & Leo Wissen & Anton Kunst, 2013. "Including the Smoking Epidemic in Internationally Coherent Mortality Projections," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(4), pages 1341-1362, August.
    7. Brian Rostron & John Wilmoth, 2011. "Estimating the Effect of Smoking on Slowdowns in Mortality Declines in Developed Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(2), pages 461-479, May.
    8. Jacques Vallin & France Meslé, 2004. "Convergences and divergences in mortality," Demographic Research Special Collections, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 2(2), pages 11-44.
    9. Samuel Preston & Andrew Stokes & Neil Mehta & Bochen Cao, 2014. "Projecting the Effect of Changes in Smoking and Obesity on Future Life Expectancy in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 27-49, February.
    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. Nicole El Karoui & Kaouther Hadji & Sarah Kaakai, 2021. "Simulating long-term impacts of mortality shocks: learning from the cholera pandemic," Papers 2111.08338, arXiv.org.
    2. John Bongaarts & Christophe Z. Guilmoto, 2015. "How Many More Missing Women? Excess Female Mortality and Prenatal Sex Selection, 1970–2050," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 41(2), pages 241-269, June.

    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. Lenny Stoeldraijer & Coen van Duin & Leo van Wissen & Fanny Janssen, 2013. "Impact of different mortality forecasting methods and explicit assumptions on projected future life expectancy: The case of the Netherlands," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(13), pages 323-354.
    2. Fanny Janssen & Leo Wissen & Anton Kunst, 2013. "Including the Smoking Epidemic in Internationally Coherent Mortality Projections," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(4), pages 1341-1362, August.
    3. Fanny Janssen & Alette Spriensma, 2012. "The contribution of smoking to regional mortality differences in the Netherlands," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 27(9), pages 233-260.
    4. Cristina Belles-Obrero & Sergi Jiménez-Martín & Judit Vall Castello, 2019. "Education and Gender Differences in Mortality Rates," Working Papers 2019-05, FEDEA.
    5. de Jong, Piet & Tickle, Leonie & Xu, Jianhui, 2020. "A more meaningful parameterization of the Lee–Carter model," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 1-8.
    6. Tobias C. Vogt & Alyson A. van Raalte & Pavel Grigoriev & Mikko Myrskylä, 2016. "German East-West mortality difference: two cross-overs driven by smoking," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2016-004, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    7. Basellini, Ugofilippo & Camarda, Carlo Giovanni & Booth, Heather, 2023. "Thirty years on: A review of the Lee–Carter method for forecasting mortality," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1033-1049.
    8. Tickle Leonie & Booth Heather, 2014. "The Longevity Prospects of Australian Seniors: An Evaluation of Forecast Method and Outcome," Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 1-34, July.
    9. 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.
    10. Yang, Seungmi & Khang, Young-Ho & Chun, Heeran & Harper, Sam & Lynch, John, 2012. "The changing gender differences in life expectancy in Korea 1970–2005," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(7), pages 1280-1287.
    11. James W. Vaupel, 2009. "Lively Questions for Demographers about Death at Older Ages," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 35(2), pages 347-356, June.
    12. Vladimir M. Shkolnikov & Evgeny M. Andreev & Zhen Zhang & James E. Oeppen & James W. Vaupel, 2009. "Losses of expected lifetime in the US and other developed countries: methods and empirical analyses," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-042, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    13. F. Peters & J. P. Mackenbach & W. J. Nusselder, 2016. "Does the Impact of the Tobacco Epidemic Explain Structural Changes in the Decline of Mortality?," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 687-702, December.
    14. Cristina Belles-Obrero & Sergi Jiménez-Martín & Judit Vall Castello, 2019. "Education and Gender Differences in Mortality Rates," Studies on the Spanish Economy 2019-05, FEDEA.
    15. Konstantinos N. Zafeiris, 2020. "Gender differences in life expectancy at birth in Greece 1994–2017," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 73-89, March.
    16. Louise Sundberg & Neda Agahi & Johan Fritzell & Stefan Fors, 2018. "Why is the gender gap in life expectancy decreasing? The impact of age- and cause-specific mortality in Sweden 1997–2014," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 63(6), pages 673-681, July.
    17. Marie-Pier Bergeron-Boucher & Søren Kjærgaard & James E. Oeppen & James W. Vaupel, 2019. "The impact of the choice of life table statistics when forecasting mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(43), pages 1235-1268.
    18. Adrian E. Raftery & Nevena Lalic & Patrick Gerland, 2014. "Joint probabilistic projection of female and male life expectancy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 30(27), pages 795-822.
    19. Jia Liu & Jackie Li, 2019. "Beyond the highest life expectancy: construction of proxy upper and lower life expectancy bounds," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 159-181, June.
    20. Christina Bohk-Ewald & Marcus Ebeling & Roland Rau, 2017. "Lifespan Disparity as an Additional Indicator for Evaluating Mortality Forecasts," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(4), pages 1559-1577, August.

    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:bla:popdev:v:40:y:2014:i:2:p:189-212. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0098-7921 .

    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.