Understanding the Rise in Life Expectancy Inequality

Gordon Dahl, Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Torben Heien Nielsen and Benjamin Ly Serena
Additional contact information
Claus Thustrup Kreiner: University of Copenhagen
Torben Heien Nielsen: University of Copenhagen
Benjamin Ly Serena: Copenhagen Business School

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2024, vol. 106, issue 2, 566-575

Abstract: We provide a novel decomposition of changing gaps in life expectancy between rich and poor into differential changes in age-specific mortality rates and differences in “survivability.” Declining age-specific mortality rates increases life expectancy, but the gain is small if the likelihood of living to this age is small (ex ante survivability) or if the expected remaining lifetime is short (ex post survivability). Lower survivability of the poor explains half of the recent rise in inequality in the United States and the entire rise in Denmark. Declines in cardiovascular mortality benefited rich and poor, but inequality increased because of differences in lifestyle-related survivability.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01148
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Understanding the Rise in Life Expectancy Inequality (2021)
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:tpr:restat:v:106:y:2024:i:2:p:566-575

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().