TY - JOUR
T1 - Drewnowski's index to measure lifespan variation
T2 - Revisiting the Gini coefficient of the life table
AU - Aburto, José Manuel
AU - Basellini, Ugofilippo
AU - Baudisch, Annette
AU - Villavicencio, Francisco
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partially funded by the European Research Council (Grant 2019-AdG-884328 ) (J.M.A. and F.V.). J.M.A. also acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie agreement (Grant 896821 ) and the Leverhulme Trust Large Centre , and F.V. from the Juan de la Cierva programme, Spanish State Research Agency (Grant IJC2019-039144-I ). This paper is dedicated to the memory of James W. Vaupel.
Funding Information:
This work was partially funded by the European Research Council (Grant 2019-AdG-884328) (J.M.A. and F.V.). J.M.A. also acknowledges funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie agreement (Grant 896821) and the Leverhulme Trust Large Centre, and F.V. from the Juan de la Cierva programme, Spanish State Research Agency (Grant IJC2019-039144-I). This paper is dedicated to the memory of James W. Vaupel.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - The Gini coefficient of the life table is a concentration index that provides information on lifespan variation. Originally proposed by economists to measure income and wealth inequalities, it has been widely used in population studies to investigate variation in ages at death. We focus on the complement of the Gini coefficient, Drewnowski's index, which is a measure of equality. We study its mathematical properties and analyze how changes over time relate to changes in life expectancy. Further, we identify the threshold age below which mortality improvements are translated into decreasing lifespan variation and above which these improvements translate into increasing lifespan inequality. We illustrate our theoretical findings simulating scenarios of mortality improvement in the Gompertz model, and showing an example of application to Swedish life table data. Our experiments demonstrate how Drewnowski's index can serve as an indicator of the shape of mortality patterns. These properties, along with our analytical findings, support studying lifespan variation alongside life expectancy trends in multiple species.
AB - The Gini coefficient of the life table is a concentration index that provides information on lifespan variation. Originally proposed by economists to measure income and wealth inequalities, it has been widely used in population studies to investigate variation in ages at death. We focus on the complement of the Gini coefficient, Drewnowski's index, which is a measure of equality. We study its mathematical properties and analyze how changes over time relate to changes in life expectancy. Further, we identify the threshold age below which mortality improvements are translated into decreasing lifespan variation and above which these improvements translate into increasing lifespan inequality. We illustrate our theoretical findings simulating scenarios of mortality improvement in the Gompertz model, and showing an example of application to Swedish life table data. Our experiments demonstrate how Drewnowski's index can serve as an indicator of the shape of mortality patterns. These properties, along with our analytical findings, support studying lifespan variation alongside life expectancy trends in multiple species.
KW - Concentration index
KW - Gompertz
KW - Life expectancy
KW - Lifespan inequality
KW - Mortality
KW - Threshold age
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U2 - 10.1016/j.tpb.2022.08.003
DO - 10.1016/j.tpb.2022.08.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 36084792
AN - SCOPUS:85143552029
SN - 0040-5809
VL - 148
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Theoretical Population Biology
JF - Theoretical Population Biology
ER -