TOPIC INFO (UGC NET)
TOPIC INFO – UGC NET (Economics)
SUB-TOPIC INFO – Environmental Economics and Demography (UNIT 9)
CONTENT TYPE – Detailed Notes
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. Introduction
2. Basic Concept
3. Types of Life Tables
4. Columns of the Life Table
5. Worked Numerical Illustration
6. Stationary Population Concept
7. Uses of the Life Table
8. Distinction from Related Concepts
9. Limitations of the Life Table
10. Conclusion
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Life Table
UGC NET ECONOMICS
Environmental Economics and Demography (UNIT 9)
Introduction
A Life Table, also known as a Mortality Table or Actuarial Table, is a fundamental demographic tool that presents a systematic, tabular account of the mortality experience of a hypothetical cohort of individuals from birth until the last member has died. It portrays, in quantitative form, how a group of persons born together is progressively depleted by death as it ages, allowing demographers, actuaries, and economists to summarize the entire mortality pattern of a population in a single coherent framework. The life table is one of the oldest tools in demography, with origins traced to John Graunt and later refined by Edmund Halley, and remains central to actuarial science, insurance pricing, population projections, and the calculation of life expectancy, a key component of the Human Development Index (HDI).
Basic Concept
The life table is constructed on the assumption of a hypothetical cohort, typically beginning with 100,000 persons (called the radix), who are assumed to be subjected, at each age, to the age-specific mortality rates actually observed in a real population during a given period (usually derived from census data and vital registration records). The life table then traces how this hypothetical cohort is reduced in size, year by year, purely due to mortality, until all members have died. Because it uses a synthetic cohort rather than following an actual birth cohort through time, this type of life table is called a period life table (or current life table), as opposed to a cohort life table (or generation life table), which follows an actual group of people born in the same year through their entire lives, using the age-specific mortality rates they actually experienced at each age as they aged. The period life table represents a cross-sectional snapshot of mortality conditions prevailing at one point in time, while the cohort life table represents a longitudinal record of one real generation’s actual mortality experience across historical time.