Aims and objectives

Aims

To introduce the two leading ways in which the modelling of age-specific mortality risk can be conceptualised and executed.

Objectives

• To describe the efforts made to categorize patterns of human mortality from empirical data and tabulate them as Model Life Tables: the Coale Demeny and United Nations approaches and their uses
• To describe the relational approach to fitting a life table: the Brass Relational Model Life Table system and its extensions

The fitting of some common mathematical models of mortality: the Gompertz, Makeham and Heligman Pollard models, is dealt with in Session 2 of this module