Time-to-death patterns in markers of age and dependency

Riffe, Tim; Chung, Pil H.; Spijker, Jeroen; MacInnes, John

doi:10.1553/populationyearbook2016s229

Cited by 11 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…That is because remaining life time is a function of underlying health conditions and a health care system's effectiveness in curing them. 17 The fewer underlying health conditions people have and the more effective medical care is in treating them, the healthier people are and the more life years they have left.…”

Section: Demographic Scaling Approach To Estimate Covid-19 Infectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A demographic scaling model for estimating the total number of COVID-19 infections

Bohk-Ewald

Dudel

Myrskylä

2020

Preprint

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Understanding how widely COVID-19 has spread is critical for examining the pandemic's progression. Despite efforts to carefully monitor the pandemic, the number of confirmed cases may underestimate the total number of infections. We introduce a demographic scaling model to estimate COVID-19 infections using an broadly applicable approach that is based on minimal data requirements: COVID-19 related deaths, infection fatality rates (IFRs), and life tables. As many countries lack reliable estimates of age-specific IFRs, we scale IFRs between countries using remaining life expectancy as a marker to account for differences in age structures, health conditions, and medical services. Across 10 countries with most COVID-19 deaths as of May 13, 2020, the number of infections is estimated to be four [95% prediction interval: 2-11] times higher than the number of confirmed cases. Cross-country variation is high. The estimated number of infections is 1.4 million (six times the number of confirmed cases) for Italy; 3.1 million (2.2 times the number of confirmed cases) for the U.S.; and 1.8 times the number of confirmed cases for Germany, where testing has been comparatively extensive. Our prevalence estimates, however, are markedly lower than most others based on local seroprevalence studies. We introduce formulas for quantifying the bias that is required in our data on deaths in order to reproduce estimates published elsewhere. This bias analysis shows that either COVID-19 deaths are severely underestimated, by a factor of two or more; or alternatively, the seroprevalence based results are overestimates and not representative for the total population.

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Section: Demographic Scaling Approach To Estimate Covid-19 Infectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A demographic scaling model for estimating the total number of COVID-19 infections

Bohk-Ewald

Dudel

Myrskylä

2020

Preprint

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“…Such indicators tend to be correlated with increasing chronological age, yet the relations are far from linear . The prevalence of some diseases is strongly associated with RLE and only slightly or not at all with chronological age [16]. It seems very helpful to have health indicators that differentiate between countries with comparable chronological age structures in order to estimate the financial implications of their populations’ health.…”

Section: Physical-health Measures Of Population Agingmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Measure Population Aging? The Answer Is Less than Obvious: A Review

2018

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Usually, population aging is measured to inform fiscal and social planning because it is considered to indicate the burden that an elderly population presents to the economic, social security, and health systems of a society. Measures of population aging are expected to indicate shifts in the distribution of individuals’ attributes (e.g., chronological age, health) within a population that are relevant to assessing the burden. We claim that chronological age – even though it is the attribute most broadly used – may frequently not be the best measure to satisfy this purpose. A distribution of chronological age per se does not present a burden. Rather, burdens arise from the characteristics that supposedly or actually accompany chronological ages. We posit that in addition to chronological age, meaningful measures of population aging should reflect, for instance, the distribution of economic productivity, health, functional capacities, or biological age, as these attributes may more directly assess the burden on the socioeconomic and health systems. Here, we illustrate some limitations of measures of population aging based on each kind of measure, including chronological age, and review alternative measures that may better inform fiscal, social, and health planning.

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“…While mental health has been found to have an impact on retirement (Olesen 2011), the opposite causality has also been found (Van der Heide 2013). Thus, age-related changes in mental health can be misleading (Riffe et al 2015). By contrast, physical health can be more easily considered as a function of age, as there is no consistent evidence that retirement affects this dimension of health (Johnston and Lee 2009).…”

Section: Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of physical health on the postponement of retirement

Boissonneault

Beer

2017

Populationyearbook

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To mitigate the effects of population ageing, measures aimed at encouraging people to work longer are being implemented in many countries. However, older people are usually in poorer physical health, and poorer physical health is associated with premature labour force withdrawal. We investigate whether the age-related decline in physical health represents a hurdle to higher labour force participation levels at older ages by proposing a simulation in which the age profile of physical health stays constant over time, while all other factors that predict labour force participation are postponed. The model is fitted using data collected by the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) in 14 European countries. The results show that on average across these countries, the effect of health on labour force participation levels is small. This effect is slightly bigger in countries in which labour force participation levels and the share of the population receiving disability benefits are already high. Thus, the decline in physical health with age should not greatly limit the effectiveness of policies designed to encourage employment at older ages.

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Time-to-death patterns in markers of age and dependency

Cited by 11 publications

References 34 publications

A demographic scaling model for estimating the total number of COVID-19 infections

A demographic scaling model for estimating the total number of COVID-19 infections

How to Measure Population Aging? The Answer Is Less than Obvious: A Review

The impact of physical health on the postponement of retirement

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