ANALYSIS OF EXOGENOUS COMPONENTS OF MORTALITY RISKS

A new technique for deriving exogenous components of mortality risks f rom national vital statistics has been developed. Each observed death rate D-ij (where i corresponds to calendar time (year or interval of y ears) and j denotes the number of corresponding age group) was represe nted as D-ij = A(j) + BiCj, and unknown quantities A(j), B-i and C-j w ere estimated by a special procedure using the least-squares principle . The coefficients of variation do not exceed 10%. It is shown that th e term A, can be interpreted as the endogenous and the second term BiC j as the exogenous components of the death rate. The aggregate of endo genous components A(j) can be described by a regression function, corr esponding to the Gompertz-Makeham law, A(tau) = gamma + beta.e(alpha t au), where gamma, beta, and alpha are constants, tau is age, A(tau)\(t au=tau j) = A(tau(j)) = A(j), and tau(j) is the value of age tau in jt h age group. The coefficients of variation for such a representation d oes not exceed 4%. An analysis of exogenous risk levels in the Moscow and Russian populations during 1980-1995 shows that since 1992 all com ponents of exogenous risk in the Moscow population had been increasing up to 1994. The greatest contribution to the total level of exogenous risk was lethal diseases, and their death rate was 387 deaths per 100 ,000 persons in 1994, i.e., 61.9% of all deaths. The dynamics of exoge nous mortality risk change during 1990-1994 in the Moscow population a nd in the Russian population without Moscow had been identical: the ri sk had been increasing, and its value in the Russian population had be en higher than that in the Moscow population.