IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/eurpop/v35y2019i1d10.1007_s10680-018-9468-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Japanese and Italian Women Live Longer than Women in Scandinavia?

Author

Listed:
  • Ørnulf Borgan

    (University of Oslo)

  • Nico Keilman

    (University of Oslo)

Abstract

Life expectancies at birth are routinely computed from period life tables. When mortality is falling, such period life expectancies will typically underestimate real life expectancies, that is, life expectancies for birth cohorts. Hence, it becomes problematic to compare period life expectancies between countries when they have different historical mortality developments. For instance, life expectancies for countries in which the longevity improved early (like Norway and Sweden) are difficult to compare with those in countries where it improved later (like Italy and Japan). To get a fair comparison between the countries, one should consider cohort data. Since cohort life expectancies can only be computed for cohorts that were born more than a hundred years ago, in this paper we suggest that for younger cohorts one may consider the expected number of years lost up to a given age. Contrary to the results based on period data, our cohort results then indicate that Italian women may expect to lose more years than women in Norway and Sweden, while there are no indications that Japanese women will lose fewer years than women in Scandinavia. The large differences seen for period data may just be an artefact due to the distortion that period life tables imply in times of changing mortality.

Suggested Citation

  • Ørnulf Borgan & Nico Keilman, 2019. "Do Japanese and Italian Women Live Longer than Women in Scandinavia?," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 35(1), pages 87-99, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eurpop:v:35:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10680-018-9468-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s10680-018-9468-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-018-9468-2
    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/s10680-018-9468-2?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. Michel Guillot, 2006. "Tempo effects in mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 14(1), pages 1-26.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Rowland, Donald T., 2003. "Demographic Methods and Concepts," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198752639.
    6. John Bongaarts & Griffith Feeney, 2002. "How Long Do We Live?," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 28(1), pages 13-29, March.
    7. James Vaupel & Kenneth Manton & Eric Stallard, 1979. "The impact of heterogeneity in individual frailty on the dynamics of mortality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 16(3), pages 439-454, August.
    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. Basellini, Ugofilippo & Kjærgaard, Søren & Camarda, Carlo Giovanni, 2020. "An age-at-death distribution approach to forecast cohort mortality," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 129-143.

    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. Nadine Ouellette & Magali Barbieri & John R. Wilmoth, 2014. "Period-Based Mortality Change: Turning Points in Trends since 1950," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 40(1), pages 77-106, March.
    2. Suryakant Yadav, 2021. "Progress of Inequality in Age at Death in India: Role of Adult Mortality," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(3), pages 523-550, July.
    3. Vogt, Tobias C. & Kluge, Fanny A., 2015. "Can public spending reduce mortality disparities? Findings from East Germany after reunification," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 5(C), pages 7-13.
    4. 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.
    5. Aymric Kamega & Frédéric Planchet, 2011. "Hétérogénéité : mesure du risque d'estimation dans le cas d'une modélisation intégrant des facteurs observables," Post-Print hal-00593874, HAL.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Hisashi Inaba, 2007. "Effects of Age Shift on the Tempo and Quantum of Non-Repeatable Events," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 131-168.
    9. 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.
    10. Marc Luy, 2006. "Mortality tempo-adjustment," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 15(21), pages 561-590.
    11. 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.
    12. Shripad Tuljapurkar & Ryan Edwards, 2011. "Variance in death and its implications for modeling and forecasting mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 24(21), pages 497-526.
    13. Kenneth W. Wachter, 2005. "Tempo and its Tribulations," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 13(9), pages 201-222.
    14. Finkelstein, Maxim, 2013. "Lifesaving, delayed deaths and cure in mortality modeling," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 15-19.
    15. Marie-Pier Bergeron-Boucher & Marcus Ebeling & Vladimir Canudas-Romo, 2015. "Decomposing changes in life expectancy: Compression versus shifting mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 33(14), pages 391-424.
    16. Vladimir Canudas-Romo, 2008. "The modal age at death and the shifting mortality hypothesis," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 19(30), pages 1179-1204.
    17. James W. Vaupel, 2002. "Life Expectancy at Current Rates vs. Current Conditions," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 7(8), pages 365-378.
    18. 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.
    19. Sergey Timonin & Inna Danilova & Evgeny Andreev & Vladimir M. Shkolnikov, 2017. "Recent Mortality Trend Reversal in Russia: Are Regions Following the Same Tempo?," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 33(5), pages 733-763, December.
    20. James W. Vaupel & Trifon Missov, 2014. "Unobserved population heterogeneity," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 31(22), pages 659-686.

    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:eurpop:v:35:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10680-018-9468-2. 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.