Understanding the Rise in Life Expectancy Inequality

Gordon Dahl, Claus Kreiner, Torben Nielsen () and Benjamin Ly Serena ()
Additional contact information
Benjamin Ly Serena: University of Copenhagen

No 14741, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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 between one-third and one-half of the recent rise in life expectancy inequality in the US and the entire change in Denmark. Our analysis shows that the recent widening of mortality rates between rich and poor due to lifestyle-related diseases does not explain much of the rise in life expectancy inequality. Rather, the dramatic 50% reduction in cardiovascular deaths, which benefited both rich and poor, made initial differences in lifestyle-related mortality more consequential via survivability.

Keywords: inequality; life expectancy; mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem, nep-hea and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Review of Economics and Statistics, 2024, 106 (2), 566 - 575

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14741.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Understanding the Rise in Life Expectancy Inequality (2024)
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:iza:izadps:dp14741

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().