Reverse mortality rates: not a miracle but a useful tool
Presentation by Dr Andrés Villegas Ramirez at the 2022 Longevity 17 Waterloo Conference in September 2022.
Dr Andrés Villegas Ramirez
If you go backwards in time, mathematically, you can potentially solve a really important problem which demographers and actuarial researchers often face: flawed population estimates. Traditionally, mortality rates are calculated as the ratio of deaths to the time exposed to risk, approximated by the average population. With an inaccurate denominator, all analysis will end up flawed, biased or simply useless. To solve this, Andrés and his collaborator Munir Hiabu define a reverse force of mortality, which is the probability that someone who is dead died just before. This may sound like a case for Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, and not like a scientific approach. Nonetheless, this neat change of perspective allows practitioners to rely entirely upon data records pertaining to deaths, which are typically of much higher data quality and therefore more reliable than population estimates based on census data.
Check out Andrés’ presentation at Longevity 17, and watch this space for news on whodunnit with reverse mortality rates:
