An Extended Decomposition of Change in the Sex Gap in Life Expectancy in Developed Countries: Period and Cohort Perspectives

Qi Cui , Australian National University
Vladimir Canudas-Romo, Australian National University
Heather Booth, Australian National University

To achieve a deeper understanding of the sex difference in mortality, this paper extends the existing methods on the changing sex gap in e(0). The new formula separates the change in sex gap in life expectancy into three components that capture: the effect from the sex difference in mortality improvement (?-effect), the effect from the sex difference in the life table distribution of deaths (f-effect), and the effect from the sex difference in remaining life expectancy (e-effect). These three components correspond to a comparison in speed of mortality reduction, dispersion of death distribution and survival advantage, respectively. Both period and cohort perspectives have been analysed in our study. To avoid the issues limited data series causes, the truncated cohort life expectancy is used. The results indicate that period and cohort analyses uncover different stories on the change in sex gap in life expectancy phenomenon in terms of these three effects.

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 Presented in Session 9. Formal Models and Methods for the Analysis of Mortality