Sex Differences in the Shape of Mortality

Serena Vigezzi , Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark
Virginia Zarulli, University of Padova, Department of Statistics
Annette Baudisch, Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics (CPop)

Females are shown to have consistently longer and less unequal lifespans than males. Although the literature on lifespan variation is less extensive than the one on life expectancy, this seems to hold true since at least the 1900s, across most countries and at every age. Comparing these measures based on chronological age, however, conflates differences in both the pace and the shape of mortality, making it difficult to analyse each separately. We propose to use the s-percentile framework to focus exclusively on sex differences in the shape of mortality, regardless of differences in length of life. Using period lifetables from the HMD and focusing on ages after 35, we find considerable differences between the age and s-percentile approaches, with higher lifespan variation but also higher remaining life expectancy for males at most survival deciles. This suggests that there may be substantial sex differences in the shape of mortality, which were not captured using chronological age. Specifically, they suggest that average male survival may be pulled upwards by a selected group of (relatively) long-lived individuals, while improvements in mortality were more equally shared in the female population. We intend to refine our results by considering percentiles and to explore them further by comparing changes in mortality at difference survival levels.

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 Presented in Session P2. Health, Mortality, Ageing - Aperitivo