Modelling Socio-Economic Differences in the Mortality of Danish Males Using a New Affluence Index

Andrew J.G. Cairns (), Malene Kallestrup-Lamb (), Carsten P.T. Rosenskjold (), David Blake and Kevin Dowd ()
Additional contact information
Andrew J.G. Cairns: Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Heriot-Watt University 4AS, United Kingdom. E-mail: A.J.G.Cairns@hw.ac.uk, Postal: Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Edinburgh, and Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14, 4AS, United Kingdom
Malene Kallestrup-Lamb: Aarhus University and CREATES, Postal: Department of Economics and Business Economics, Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark
Carsten P.T. Rosenskjold: Aarhus University and CREATES, Postal: Department of Economics and Business Economics, Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark
Kevin Dowd: Durham University Business School, Postal: Durham University Business School, Mill Hill Lane, Durham DH1 3LB, United Kingdom.

CREATES Research Papers from Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University

Abstract: We investigate and model how the mortality of Danish males aged 55-94 has changed over the period 1985-2012. We divide the population into ten socio-economic subgroups using a new measure of affluence that combines wealth and income reported on the Statistics Denmark national register database. The affluence index, in combination with sub-group lockdown at age 67, is shown to provide consistent sub-group rankings based on crude death rates across all ages and over all years in a way that improves significantly on previous studies that have focused on life expectancy. The gap between the most and least affluent is confirmed to be widest at younger ages and has widened over time. We introduce a new multi-population mortality model that fits the historical mortality data very well and generates smoothed death rates that can be used to model a larger number of smaller sub-groups than has been previously possible without losing the essential character of the raw data. The model produces bio-demographically reasonable forecasts of mortality rates that preserve the sub-group rankings at all ages. It also satisfies reasonableness criteria related to the term structure of correlations across ages and over time through consideration of future death and survival rates.

Keywords: Danish mortality data; affluence; CBD-X model; gravity model; multipopulation mortality modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 G22 J11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2016-05-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea, nep-pr~ and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.econ.au.dk/repec/creates/rp/16/rp16_14.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aah:create:2016-14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CREATES Research Papers from Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().