Modeling disease elimination.

The effect of the elimination of mortality from heart disease and cancer was modelled mathematically to allow for the effect of other competing causes of death. The model allows for potential dependence between heart disease or cancer and other causes of death by using cupola functions, which analyse the individual risk itself and the dependence structure between causes of death by using correlation coefficients. As the strength of these risk associations is unknown, the study investigated both full positive and negative dependence and compared this with no dependence. Depending upon the degree and type of correlation assumed, positive or negative, the life expectancy at birth is increased by between 3 months and 6.5 years if cancer mortality was eliminated, and between 5 months and 7.5 years in the case of heart disease. In addition, estimates of these effects on life insurance premia can be made with the greatest reduction for women with the elimination of cancer mortality. These figures provide a range of improvements in life expectancy and the consequent effect on life insurance risk premium rates which elimination of either of these important diseases would produce.