Simulating long-term impacts of mortality shocks: learning from the cholera pandemic

TL;DR

This paper investigates the long-term effects of mortality shocks like pandemics on population longevity using historical data and stochastic individual-based modeling, providing insights into future mortality trends.

Contribution

It combines historical analysis of cholera epidemics with advanced stochastic modeling to simulate long-term mortality impacts of shocks.

Findings

Historical cholera epidemics influenced public health development.

The modeling framework predicts long-term mortality rate changes.

Population composition shifts affect future mortality rates.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the long-term consequence on longevity of a mortality shock. We adopt an historical and modeling approach to study how the population evolution following a mortality shock such as the COVID-19 pandemic could impact future mortality rates. In the first of part the paper, we study the several cholera epidemics in France and in England starting from the 1830s, and their impact on the major development of public health at the end of the nineteenth century. In the second part, we present the mathematical modeling of stochastic Individual-Based models. Using the R package IBMPopSim, this flexible framework is then applied to simulate the long-term impact of a mortality shock, using a toy model where nonlinear population compositional changes affect future mortality rates.