A Mixture-Function Mortality Model: Illustration of the Evolution of Premature Mortality

Lucia Zanotto (), Vladimir Canudas-Romo and Stefano Mazzuco
Additional contact information
Lucia Zanotto: Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Vladimir Canudas-Romo: Australian National University
Stefano Mazzuco: University of Padua

European Journal of Population, 2021, vol. 37, issue 1, No 1, 27 pages

Abstract: Abstract Premature mortality is often a neglected component of overall deaths, and the most difficult to identify. However, it is important to estimate its prevalence. Following Pearson’s theory about mortality components, a definition of premature deaths and a parametric model to study its transformations are introduced. The model is a mixture of three distributions: a Half Normal for the first part of the death curve and two Skew Normals to fit the remaining pieces. One advantage of the model is the possibility of obtaining an explicit equation to compute life expectancy at birth and to break it down into mortality components. We estimated the mixture model for Sweden, France, East Germany and Czech Republic. In addition, to the well-known reduction in infant deaths, and compression and shifting trend of adult mortality, we were able to study the trend of the central part of the distribution of deaths in detail. In general, a right shift of the modal age at death for young adults is observed; in some cases, it is also accompanied by an increase in the number of deaths at these ages: in particular for France, in the last twenty years, premature mortality increases.

Keywords: Mortality model; Mixture distribution; Skew Normal distribution; Premature mortality; Life expectancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-019-09552-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:eurpop:v:37:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10680-019-09552-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10680

DOI: 10.1007/s10680-019-09552-x

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Population is currently edited by Helga A.G. de Valk

More articles in European Journal of Population from Springer, European Association for Population Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().