Divergence in age-patterns of mortality change drives international divergence in lifespan inequality

TL;DR

This paper establishes a precise link between age-specific mortality changes and lifespan inequality, highlighting how shifts in a threshold age influence divergence in lifespan inequality across countries.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to analyze how age-patterns of mortality change drive international divergence in lifespan inequality, emphasizing the role of a threshold age near retirement.

Findings

Mortality changes at young ages increase lifespan inequality.

Shifts in the threshold age affect the correlation between life expectancy and inequality.

Divergence in mortality patterns post-WWII explains international differences in lifespan inequality.

Abstract

In the past six decades, lifespan inequality has varied greatly within and among countries even while life expectancy has continued to increase. How and why does mortality change generate this diversity? We derive a precise link between changes in age-specific mortality and lifespan inequality, measured as the variance of age at death. Key to this relationship is a young-old threshold age, below and above which mortality decline respectively decreases and increases lifespan inequality. First, we show that shifts in the threshold's location modified the correlation between changes in life expectancy and lifespan inequality over the last two centuries. Second, we analyze the post Second World War trajectories of lifespan inequality in a set of developed countries, Japan, Canada and the United States (US), where thresholds centered on retirement age. Our method reveals how divergence in the age-pattern of mortality change drives international divergence in lifespan inequality. Most strikingly, early in the 1980s, mortality increases in young US males led lifespan inequality to remain high in the US, while in Canada the decline of inequality continued. In general, our wider international comparisons show that mortality change varied most at young working ages after the Second World War, particularly for males. We conclude that if mortality continues to stagnate at young ages, yet declines steadily at old ages, increases in lifespan inequality will become a common feature of future demographic change.