IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/offsta/v37y2021i3p569-589n8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modelling Frontier Mortality Using Bayesian Generalised Additive Models

Author

Listed:
  • Hilton Jason
  • Smith Peter W.F.

    (Department of Social Statistics and Demography, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.)

  • Dodd Erengul

    (School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.)

  • Forster Jonathan J.

    (Department of Statistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.)

Abstract

Mortality rates differ across countries and years, and the country with the lowest observed mortality has changed over time. However, the classic Science paper by Oeppen and Vaupel (2002) identified a persistent linear trend over time in maximum national life expectancy. In this article, we look to exploit similar regularities in age-specific mortality by considering for any given year a hypothetical mortality ‘frontier’, which we define as the lower limit of the force of mortality at each age across all countries. Change in this frontier reflects incremental advances across the wide range of social, institutional and scientific dimensions that influence mortality. We jointly estimate frontier mortality as well as mortality rates for individual countries. Generalised additive models are used to estimate a smooth set of baseline frontier mortality rates and mortality improvements, and country-level mortality is modelled as a set of smooth, positive deviations from this, forcing the mortality estimates for individual countries to lie above the frontier. This model is fitted to data for a selection of countries from the Human Mortality Database (2019). The efficacy of the model in forecasting over a ten-year horizon is compared to a similar model fitted to each country separately.

Suggested Citation

  • Hilton Jason & Smith Peter W.F. & Dodd Erengul & Forster Jonathan J., 2021. "Modelling Frontier Mortality Using Bayesian Generalised Additive Models," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 37(3), pages 569-589, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:vrs:offsta:v:37:y:2021:i:3:p:569-589:n:8
    DOI: 10.2478/jos-2021-0026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2021-0026
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2478/jos-2021-0026?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. James Vaupel & Vladimir Romo, 2003. "Decomposing change in life expectancy: A bouquet of formulas in honor of Nathan Keyfitz’s 90th birthday," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 40(2), pages 201-216, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Edwards, Ryan, 2008. "Widening health inequalities among U.S. military retirees since 1974," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 1657-1668, December.
    4. Ahbab Mohammad Fazle Rabbi & Stefano Mazzuco, 2021. "Mortality Forecasting with the Lee–Carter Method: Adjusting for Smoothing and Lifespan Disparity," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(1), pages 97-120, March.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Glenn Firebaugh & Francesco Acciai & Aggie Noah & Christopher J Prather & Claudia Nau, 2014. "Why the racial gap in life expectancy is declining in the United States," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 31(32), pages 975-1006.
    8. Per Kragh Andersen & Vladimir Canudas-Romo & Niels Keiding, 2013. "Cause-specific measures of life years lost," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(41), pages 1127-1152.
    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. Ryohei Mogi & Vladimir Canudas-Romo, 2018. "Expected years ever married," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 38(47), pages 1423-1456.
    11. 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.
    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. Carl Schmertmann, 2020. "Revivorship and life lost to mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 42(17), pages 497-512.
    14. Mogi, Ryohei & del Mundo, Michael, 2018. "Remaining childless or postponing first birth?," SocArXiv hy98w, Center for Open Science.
    15. 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.
    16. Patrick Heuveline, 2023. "Interpreting changes in life expectancy during temporary mortality shocks," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 48(1), pages 1-18.
    17. Hal Caswell & Silke van Daalen, 2021. "Healthy longevity from incidence-based models: More kinds of health than stars in the sky," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 45(13), pages 397-452.
    18. Aburto, José Manuel & di Lego, Vanessa & Riffe, Tim & Kashyap, Ridhi & van Raalte, Alyson & Torrisi, Orsola, 2023. "A global assessment of the impact of violence on lifetime uncertainty," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118196, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Annette Baudisch & Jesús-Adrián Alvarez, 2021. "Born once, die once: Life table relationships for fertility," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(2), pages 49-66.
    20. Chiara Gigliarano & Ugofilippo Basellini & Marco Bonetti, 2017. "Longevity and concentration in survival times: the log-scale-location family of failure time models," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 254-274, April.

    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:vrs:offsta:v:37:y:2021:i:3:p:569-589:n:8. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.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.