Mortality Convergence Across High-Income Countries : An Econometric Approach

This work is devoted to the study of the variations of mortality patterns across a sample of high-income countries since 1960. We study changes in age-at-death distributions through two indicators, life expectancy and Gini coefficient, by applying econometric tools commonly used in the economic growth literature to assess the existence of convergence across the countries in our sample. We contribute to the ongoing debate over the existence of convergence amongst high-income countries in adult mortality by offering two main empirical regularities. First, our results show that the convergence hypothesis is rejected when we consider the entire sample of industrialized countries. Second, we provide evidence of convergence in both the life expectancy and Gini coefficient among a subset of countries and for some subperiods. This constitutes preliminary evidence against the convergence to a common age-at-death stationary distribution but of the existence of convergence clubs.