Multiple decrements

The life table methods introduced in PAPP101-S07 deal with only one decrement (death) and l₀ represents a cohort of life births that is followed until they die. Sometimes we are not just interested in deaths, but would like to distinguish deaths by cause. For example:

Life tables that retain the distinction between two or more causes of death are called multiple decrement life tables (MDLT). A common application of MDLT is in the study of cause-specific mortality, but it has applications in other situations with competing risks: exit from marriage via divorce or widowhood, exit from parity 0 via a marital or non-marital birth, etc.