Autumn School "Introduction in Mortality Analysis for Population Health Research using R"

On September 26-30, 2022, the HSE International Laboratory for Population and Health held an autumn school "Introduction in Mortality Analysis for Population Health using R". The school brought together participants from different cities of Russia.

The opening of the school began with a welcoming speech by the organizers of the school: Dmitry Jdanov (IL for Population and Health, HSE University, Russia; Institute for Demographic Research of the Max Planck Society, Germany) and Sergey Timonin (IL for Population and Health, HSE University, Russia).

On the first day, the participants of the school listened to a lecture on the basics of mortality analysis: they got acquainted with the crude and age-specific death rates, their standardization, as well as life tables. Further, the school participants remembered the basic principles of writing scripts in R and the principles of making life tables, and also practiced calculating various indicators during a practical lesson in R. On the second day, Vladimir M. Shkolnokov (IL for Population and Health, HSE University, Russia; the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany) gave a lecture on inequality in health and mortality, spoke about differences in mortality depending on education and professional class, as well as methods for assessing inequality. Next, Dmitry Jdanov gave a lecture on some examples of inequality measures (for example, the Lorenz curve, gini-coefficient) and demonstrated how to calculate these indicators in R.

 On the third day of the school, participants listened to a lecture on the life tables by cause of death, healthy life expectancy and classification of causes of death. On the fourth day of the school, decomposition methods were considered (according to Kitagawa, Andreev, Pollard, etc.), as well as practical examples of calculating decomposition in R. On the final day, mortality forecasting, in particular, the Lee-Carter model, was considered. At the end, the participants presented group projects with the results of the analysis of mortality in countries and regions using the methods and tools learned in the classes.

 The theoretical part was supplemented by practical exercises, in which students tried using the R language to calculate life expectancy, the gini-coefficient, apply the Cannisto method to smooth data, perform decomposition by cause of death, calculate healthy life expectancy using the Sullivan method, and predict mortality and life expectancy using the Lee Carter method.