Threshold ages for the relation between lifetime entropy and mortality risk

Patrick Meyer and Gregory Ponthiere

Mathematical Social Sciences, 2020, vol. 108, issue C, 1-7

Abstract: We study the effect of a change in age-specific probability of death on risk about the duration of life measured by Shannon’s entropy defined to the base 2. We first show that a rise in the probability of death at age n increases lifetime entropy at age k≤n if and only if the quantity of information revealed by the event of a death at age n exceeds lifetime entropy at age n+1 divided by the probability to survive from age k to age n+1. There exist, under general conditions, two threshold ages: first, a low threshold age below which a rise in mortality risk decreases lifetime entropy, and above which it raises lifetime entropy; second, a high threshold age above which a rise in mortality risk reduces lifetime entropy. Using French life tables, we show that the gap between those two threshold ages has been increasing over the last two centuries.

Keywords: Mortality risk; Lifetime entropy; Threshold age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165489620300640
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Threshold Ages for the Relation between Lifetime Entropy and Mortality Risk (2019)
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:eee:matsoc:v:108:y:2020:i:c:p:1-7

DOI: 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2020.07.004

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematical Social Sciences is currently edited by J.-F. Laslier

More articles in Mathematical Social Sciences from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().