A Multi-population Approach to Forecasting All-Cause Mortality Using Cause-of-Death Mortality Data. (18th February 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lyu, Pintao; De Waegenaere, Anja; Melenberg, Bertrand
• Is Part Of: North American actuarial journal. Volume 25(2021)Supplement 1
• Page Start: S421
• Page End: S456
• Publication Date: 2021-02-18
• Subjects: Life insurance -- Research -- North America -- Periodicals; Actuarial science -- North America -- Periodicals; Web sites; Electronic journals; 368.010973
• DOI: 10.1080/10920277.2019.1662316
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2325-0453

Abstract

Abstract : All-cause mortality is driven by various types of cause-specific mortality. Projecting all-cause mortality based on cause-of-death mortality allows one to understand the drivers of the recent changes in all-cause mortality. However, the existing literature has argued that all-cause mortality projections based on cause-specific mortality experience have a number of serious drawbacks, including the inferior cause-of-death mortality data and the complex dependence structure between causes of death. In this article, we use the recent World Health Organization causes-of-death data to address this issue in a multipopulation context. We construct a new model in the spirit of N. Li and Lee (2005 ) but in terms of cause-specific mortality. A new two-step beta convergence test is used to capture the cause-specific mortality dynamics between different countries and between different causes. We show that the all-cause mortality estimations produced by the new model perform in the sample similarly to the estimations by the Lee-Carter and Li-Lee all-cause mortality models. However, in contrast to results from earlier studies, we find that the all-cause mortality projections of the new model have better out-of-sample performance in a long forecast horizon. Moreover, for the case of The Netherlands, an approximately 1-year higher remaining life expectancy projection for a 67-year-old Dutch male in a 30-year forecast horizon is obtained by this new model, compared to the all-cause Li-Lee mortality model.