Center for Demographic Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain; ICREA, Barcelona, Spain.
Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Demography. 2024 Apr 1;61(2):513-540. doi: 10.1215/00703370-11245278.
We propose a novel decomposition approach that breaks down the levels and trends of lifespan inequality as the sum of cause-of-death contributions. The suggested method shows whether the levels and changes in lifespan inequality are attributable to the levels and changes in (1) the extent of inequality in the cause-specific age-at-death distribution (the "Inequality" component), (2) the total share of deaths attributable to each cause (the "Proportion" component), or (3) the cause-specific mean age at death (the "Mean" component). This so-called Inequality-Proportion-Mean (or IPM) method is applied to 10 low-mortality countries in Europe. Our findings suggest that the most prevalent causes of death (in our setting, "circulatory system" and "neoplasms") do not necessarily contribute the most to overall levels of lifespan inequality. In fact, "perinatal and congenital" causes are the strongest drivers of lifespan inequality declines. The contribution of the IPM components to changes in lifespan inequality varies considerably across causes, genders, and countries. Among the three components, the Mean one explains the least lifespan inequality dynamics, suggesting that shifts in cause-specific mean ages at death alone contributed little to changes in lifespan inequality.
我们提出了一种新颖的分解方法，将寿命不平等的水平和趋势分解为死因贡献的总和。该方法表明，寿命不平等的水平和变化是否归因于以下三个方面的水平和变化：（1）特定死因的年龄别死亡分布不平等程度（“不平等”成分）；（2）归因于每种死因的死亡总数（“比例”成分）；或（3）特定死因的平均死亡年龄（“平均”成分）。这种所谓的不平等-比例-平均（或 IPM）方法应用于欧洲的 10 个低死亡率国家。我们的研究结果表明，最常见的死因（在我们的设定中为“循环系统”和“肿瘤”）不一定对寿命不平等的总体水平贡献最大。事实上，“围产期和先天性”原因是导致寿命不平等下降的最强驱动力。IPM 成分对寿命不平等变化的贡献因死因、性别和国家而异。在这三个成分中，平均年龄成分解释的寿命不平等动态最少，表明特定死因的平均年龄变化本身对寿命不平等变化的贡献不大。
