The Mean Unfulfilled Lifespan (MUL): A new indicator of the impact of mortality shocks on the individual lifespan, with application to mortality reversals induced by COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: Declines in period life expectancy at birth (PLEB) provide seemingly intuitive indicators of the impact of a cause of death on the individual lifespan. Derived under the assumption that future mortality conditions will remain indefinitely those observed during a reference period, however, their intuitive interpretation becomes problematic when period conditions reflect a temporary mortality "shock", resulting from a natural disaster or the diffusion of a new epidemic in the population for instance. Rather than to make assumptions about future mortality, I propose measuring the difference between a period average age at death and the average expected age at death of the same individuals (death cohort): the Mean Unfulfilled Lifespan (MUL). For fine-grained tracking of the mortality impact of

SUBMITTER: Heuveline P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8315782 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature