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Abstract

Fitting and forecasting the age pattern of mortality has been of interest to researchers and practitioners for a century and a half. In fact, many researchers have focused on the decomposition of the life length lifespan into homogeneous age groups for which a similar pattern of mortality can be discerned, and then considered the secular dynamics of these age groups. In this paper, we propose to use a mortality improvement rate model where the changes in mortality rates are linearly related to changes in three target rates corresponding to three “key ages”. These ages represent age groups where mortality evolves according to a specific pattern. Thus, we decide to fit and forecast mortality for the entire age range using these three key ages, chosen based on their demographic meaning. The key age model is fitted to seven populations and two genders, and the in-sample and out-of-sample outcomes are compared to two mortality models used as benchmark. Despite its small number of parameters, the model shows good in-sample and out-of-sample accuracy.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article to be published by Taylor & Francis in Scandinavian Actuarial Journal, to be available at: www.tandfonline.com/journals/SACT
Publisher Keywords:	Mortality Improvements; Key Age; Mortality Curve; Mortality Patterns; Cross-Validation
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform R Medicine > RC Internal medicine
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Faculty of Actuarial Science & Insurance
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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