RESEARCH REPORT

Long term mortality trends behind low life expectancy of Danish women

R Jacobsen¹, N Keiding² and E Lynge¹

¹ Institute of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
² Department of Biostatistics, Institute of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr R Jacobsen, Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3, DK-2200, Denmark;
R.jacobsen{at}pubhealth.ku.dk

Study objective: To examine the long time mortality trends of women in Denmark.

Design: Age-period-cohort analysis.

Setting: To search for possible causes we analysed mortality rates for all Danish women and men aged 40–84 during 1960–1999. Age-period-cohort modelling was used, handling the well known indeterminacy in a sensitivity analysis.

Main results: The results indicate that the high risk of dying among Danish women is associated with being born between the two world wars. A similar pattern was not seen for men.

Conclusion: The rather simple descriptive exploration in the framework of age-period-cohort modelling used, revealed a pattern not reflected by the commonly used life expectancy calculation. It is suggested that future studies on the low life expectancy of Danish women focus on the "between wars" generations identified with a high risk of dying in this study.

Keywords: age-period-cohort modelling; life expectancy; mortality; sensitivity analysis

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Bronnum-Hansen, H., Petersen, I., Jeune, B., Christensen, K. (2009). Lifetime according to health status among the oldest olds in Denmark. Age Ageing 38: 47-51 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Jacobsen, R., Keiding, N., Lynge, E. (2006). Causes of death behind low life expectancy of Danish women. Scand J Public Health 34: 432-436 [Abstract]  
• Janssen, F, AE Kunst for The Netherlands Epidemiology and Demo, (2005). Cohort patterns in mortality trends among the elderly in seven European countries, 1950-99. Int J Epidemiol 34: 1149-1159 [Abstract] [Full Text]