Journal Article

Confidence estimation of demographic rates on example of mortality rates

Abstract

Demographers usually ignore a stochastic nature of demographic rates, in particular of mortality rates. However, a growing interest in longevity and mortality of small population groups or areas requires plausible solutions for confidence estimation of mortality measures. This paper provides a formula for posterior distribution of death rates in a homogeneous group of population. We also propose a new approach to estimate confidence limits for the death rate. We show that confidence limits for aggregate mortality measures, including life expectancy, can be easily estimated using the posterior distribution of death rates and the methods of stochastic simulation.