Old and New Perspectives on Mortality Forecasting

Tommy Bengtsson is Professor of Demography and Economic History, Lund University. He received his doctoral degree from Lund University in 1980 on a dissertation on 20th century technological change and labor market issues. Afterwards, he started to work in the area of population economics, especially on demographic response to short-term changes in real wages using historical records at macro level for Sweden. Next, he combined an event history approach with a time-series approach to analyze the effects of changes in real wages on demographic outcomes at micro level. Later, he used a similar approach studying the effects of conditions in early life on health and socioeconomic performance later in life. To be able to do so, he build up the Scanian Economic Demographic Database (SEDD), which is closing the gap between the historical and contemporary datasets and today, the Centre for Economic Demography (CED), which he started in 2006, is administrating the database. Bengtssonhas also been involved in studies on population ageing and welfare state as well as on the current immigration to Sweden.  Nico Keilman is Professor of Demography at the Department of Economics, University of Oslo, since 1994. He studied applied mathematics and demography at the universities of Delft and Utrecht, and received his doctoral degree at the latter university in 1990, for a dissertation on the accuracy of population forecasts. He has more than 30 years of experience in mathematical and statistical research on demographic models for the dynamics of living arrangements, mortality projections, and demographic methods in general. From 2006 until 2011, he was the editor of Demographic Research.

• Ch 1.Introduction: Tommy Bengtsson, Nico Keilman, Juha Alho, Kaare Christensen, Edward Palmer, James W. Vaupel: SECTION 1. Current practice: Introduction by Tommy Bengtsson and Nico Keilman.- Ch 2.       Life Expectancy is Taking Center Place in Modern National Pension Schemes – A New Challenge for the Art of Projecting Mortality: Edward Palmer        .- Ch 3.            Experiences from Forecasting Mortality in Finland: Juha Alho.- Ch 4. Mortality Projections in Norway: Helge Brunborg.- Ch 5. Mortality Assumptions for Sweden. The 2000–2050 Population Projection: Hans Lundström.- Ch 6. Forecasting Life Expectancy: The SCOPE Approach: James W. Vaupel.- Ch 7. Mortality Forecasts. Comments on How to Improve Existing Models – an Epidemiologist’s Perspective: Kaare Christensen.- Ch 8. The Need for Looking Far Back in Time When Predicting Future Mortality Trends: Tommy Bengtsson.- SECTION 2. Probabilistic models: Introduction by Nico Keilman.- Ch 9. Erroneous Population Forecasts: Nico Keilman.- Ch 10. Remarks on the Use of Probabilities in Demography and Forecasting: Juha M. Alho.- Ch 11. An Expert Knowledge Approach to Stochastic Mortality Forecasting in the Netherlands: Maarten Alders and Joop de Beer.- Ch 12. Stochastic Forecasts of Mortality, Population and Pension Systems: Shripad Tuljapurkar.- SECTION 3. The linear rise in life expectancy: History and prospects: Introduction by Tommy Bengtsson.- Ch 13. The Linear Rise in the Number of Our Days: Jim Oeppen and James W. Vaupel.- Ch 14. Mortality Forecasts and Linear Life Expectancy Trends: Ronald Lee.- Ch 15. Forecasting Life Expectancy: A Statistical Look at Model Choice and Use of Auxiliary Series: Juha M. Alho.- Ch 16. Life Expectancy Convergence among Nations since 1820: Separating the Effects of Technology and Income: Jim Oeppen.- Ch 17. Linear Increase in Life Expectancy: Past and Present: Tommy Bengtsson.- SECTION 4. Causes of death: Introduction by Tommy Bengtsson and Kaare Christensen.- Ch 18. How Useful Are the Causes of Death When Extrapolating Mortality Trends. An Update: Graziella Caselli, Jacques Vallin and Marco Marsili.- Ch 19. Forecasting Life Expectancy and Mortality in Sweden – Some Comments on Methodological Problems and Potential Approaches: Måns Rosén.- Ch 20. How Analysis of Mortality by Cause of Death is Currently Influencing UK Forecasts: Richard Willets.- SECTION 5. Cohort factors: How conditions in early life influence mortality later in life: Introduction by Tommy Bengtsson.- Ch 21. A Life Course Perspective to the Modern Secular Mortality Decline and Socioeconomic Differences in Morbidity and Mortality in Sweden: Martin Lindström and George Davey Smith.- Ch 22. Early Life Events and Later Life Health: Twin and Famine Studies: Kaare Christensen.- Ch 23. The Month of Birth: Evidence for Declining but Persistent Cohort Effects in Lifespan: Gabriele Doblhammer.- Ch 24. Early-Life Conditions and Old-Age Mortality in a Comparative Perspective:19th Century Sweden and Belgium: Tommy Bengtsson and George Alter.