Competing effects on the average age of infant death

Monica Alexander and Leslie Root

No z4qg9, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: In recent decades, the relationship between the average length of life for those who die in the first year of life — the lifetable quantity 1𝑎0 — and the level of infant mortality, on which its calculation is often based, has broken down. The very low levels of infant mortality in the developed world correspond to a range of 1𝑎0 quantities. We illustrate the competing effect of falling mortality and reduction in preterm births on 1𝑎0, through two populations with very different levels of premature birth — infants born to non-Hispanic white mothers and to non- Hispanic black mothers in the United States. Through simulation, we further demonstrate that falling mortality reduces 1𝑎0, while a reduction in premature births increases it. We use these observations to motivate the formulation of a new approximation formula for 1𝑎0 in low- mortality contexts, which is a function of both the infant mortality rate and the ratio of infant to under-five mortality. Model results and validation show that this model outperforms existing alternatives.

Date: 2020-12-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-rmg
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:z4qg9

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/z4qg9

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