What is the difference between life expectancy and average age of death?

You can think of life expectancy in a particular year as the age a person born in that year would expect to live if the average age of death did not change over the course of their lifetime. Of course, it's not possible to know this metric before all members of the cohort have died. Life expectancy is the key metric for evaluating the health of the population. Wider than the narrow metric of infant and infant mortality, which focuses only on mortality at an early age, life expectancy reflects mortality throughout the life cycle.

It tells us the average age of death in a population. Longevity is the ability to survive beyond the species-specific average age of death (De Benedictis and Franceschi, 200). This definition involves not only the individual capacity to reach old age, but also mortality at the population level, measured in this case by the average age of death of the population. Alternative definitions of longevity refer to the period between the birth and death of an individual, but are expressed in a cohort measure (Carey and Judge 200).

The median and modal age of death are rarely proposed as measures to study longevity. Generally, the average age of death, or life expectancy, is preferred. However, all three measures of central tendency are important. They complement each other with information about the “center of the distribution of deaths”.

Therefore, in an analysis of mortality trends over time, it is important to include the three measures of central tendency to understand the dynamics of these most representative values. The perspective of the period must be strictly distinguished from the perspective of the cohort. The latter is the most intuitive and clearly interpretable analytical concept. It connects longitudinally the age-specific mortality rates experienced by a cohort throughout its life.

Therefore, cohort life expectancy (CLE) reflects the real average age at death of real people who were born at the same time. Naturally, the CLE can only summarize past mortality experiences, while the PLE reflects the most current mortality rates across all ages. This is why the PLE is of greater relevance for most practical purposes and is used more frequently than the CLE. Life expectancy, estimate of the average number of additional years a person of a given age can expect to live.

The most common measure of life expectancy is life expectancy at birth. Life expectancy is a hypothetical measure. It assumes that age-specific mortality rates for the year in question will apply throughout the lives of people born in that year. In effect, the estimate projects age-specific mortality (death) rates for a given period throughout the life of the population born (or alive) during that time.

The measurement differs significantly by sex, age, race and geographical location. Therefore, life expectancy is commonly given for specific categories, rather than for the general population. For example, the life expectancy of white women in the United States who were born in 2003 is 80.4 years. For example, the record values observed for women in 1842 are 79, 54 and 45 years for modal and middle ages and life expectancy, respectively (see Figure 3, panel a).

In these early years, there will be an increase in the median and average age of death, but there will be a very modest change in the modality. Historical data on life expectancy in England clearly show that life expectancy did not increase for much of the initial period of British industrialization. However, in view of ongoing research, changes in government regulations and the constant flow of information related to pharmacotherapy and drug reactions, the reader is kindly requested to consult the package leaflet for each medication for changes in indications and dosage and if there are additional warnings and precautions. To ensure that the resulting estimates of the odds of death within each age interval are uniform throughout life, it is common to use mathematical formulas to model how the strength of mortality changes within and between age intervals.

The number of people between 10 and 15 years old who died in the year 200 and, divided by the total population observed (or projected) alive at any given time in that interval (e. Although the distribution of mortality was never symmetric during its change from bimodal to unimodal, demographers have used life expectancy to describe its dynamics. Evidence of this process includes the acceleration of the increase in the number of older people (85 years of age or older) (Waite 200), the increase in the number and percentages of centenarians and supercentenarians (Robine and Paccaud 200), the steady increase in the maximum recorded life expectancy (Wilmoth et al. In all countries, the life expectancy of women is higher than the life expectancy of men, as this graph shows.

At time 0, the modal age of death at older ages is 80.5 years, the average age of death is 54.9 years and life expectancy is 47.6.In some less developed countries, life expectancy at birth may be lower than life expectancy at 1 year, due to high infant mortality rates (usually due to infectious diseases or lack of access to a clean water supply). Since then, all three measures have increased at a similar rate, slowly reducing the gaps between the modality and the median (average since 1990 of 3.3 years for women and 4.5 years for men) and between median and life expectancy (average difference of 2.9 for both). As shown by Oeppen and Vaupel (200), only a few countries have maintained the record for life expectancy at birth over time. In addition, Figure 3 compares the results of the record life expectancy with the other two measures of central tendency.

Let the mortality force at age a and at time t be denoted as μa, t) and defined according to Siler's model of mortality change as. Life tables that are based on age-specific mortality rates (observed when tracking and forecasting the death and survival of a group of people as they age). . .

Christine Febles
Christine Febles

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