Practical Class 5
Health and Mortality
DEMOGRAPHY
Life Table Exercise
• In groups of 3
• Submit until end of the class
• 1. complete life table
• 2. probabilities
– Next to e.g. rates and ratios, probabilities (ranging
from 0 to 1) are demographic measures
– Can be read or calculated from life table
Points you could get until now (max)
• 1 for the interpolation/extrapolation exercise
in class
• 1 for the age standardization & lexis diagram
• 1 point for life table exercise
=Total maximum 3 points
Plan
• Student Presentation
• Questions/hint Lexis
• Exercise Life Tables on Aula Global
Angus Deaton- Nobel Laureate
• Recently published new book on the US;
review:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2021/08/15
/book-review-deaths-of-despair-and-the-futur
e-of-capitalism-by-anne-case-and-angus-deat
on/
• See also opioid crisis in US
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/13/briefin
g/opioids-drug-overdose-death-toll.html
Questions
• Discuss how different the world of the 21st century would be if a) death rates had
not declined as they did in the first part of the 20th century; and b) if World War II
had not happened
• In which ways does society (policy?) have to change to ward off the potentially fatal
side effects of the nutrition revolution?
• Vaupel & Oeppen (recommended literature) argue that the there is no hard limit to
human longevity. What do you think?
• Why was the richest country of the world (USA) never the country with record-life
expectancy?
• ARTICLE CUTLER ET AL. (2006): Which one do you think was the main cause of the
historical mortality decline in England (Europe)? Why?
• Why do women tend to outlive men? In what kind of social setting do we find the
opposite: that is, men tending to outlive women?
Question 4. US
• “Americans spend far more on health
than any other country in the world,
yet the life expectancy of the
American population is shorter than in
other rich countries that spend far
less”
• “While life expectancy for people
around the world continued to
increase, life expectancy of Americans
has declined since 2014. With the
pandemic of 2020 – which already
caused more than 225,000 deaths due
to COVID-19 and 300,000 excess
deaths – it is unfortunately already
certain that the decline of life
expectancy in the US will continue this
year.”
Question 6. Sex differences in mortality
“The low but
persistent sex-
specific mortality
differences
between the
members of
religious orders may
be attributable to
biological factors.”
(Luy, 2003,
recommended
reading)
Life Table Exercise
• Look for Excel Table on Aula Global
• Hint: you need to complete the life tables to answer
the questions of the “exercise” tab
• Drag down or copy-paste formulas to complete the
table
• Another explanation by UK office for national
statistics:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunit
REMEMBERING
(Usually n = 5)
10
c
So now you know, right?
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• q = probability dying between age x and x+n
n x
can be calculated from real number of persons alive and deaths occurring in age interval x to x+n
q = ndx / Ix
n x
• Ix = number of people alive at the beginning of each age interval, starting with 100,000 at birth
(RADIX) number of survivors at the beginning of age x in hypothetical population Ix =Ix-1 - ndx-1
• d = number dying within each age interval ndx = nqx * lx
n x
• L = total number of person-years lived within each age interval nLx = n * (lx – 0.5* ndx)
n x
for age 0-1: 1L0 = 1 * (l0 – 0.90* 1d0), because much higher probability that babies die in first 1-2
months of life
Ages 1-4: nLx = n * (lx – 0.60* ndx)
Last age interval: L100+= I100+/M100+ an approximation of how long the 100-year olds will continue living
• Tx = total number of person-years in the age interval and in all subsequent intervals (after exact
age x) Tx= Tx+n + nLx
• ex =remaining lifetime at exact age x ex = Tx / lx
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