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 school presented essential demographic methods for health and mortality research: the standard life table construction, including additional life table quantities such as measures of inequality;  the measures of healthy life expectancy;  some decomposition methods that  allow to investigate differences between mortality measures by age, sex, and cause of death; Fthe mortality forecast based on Lee-Carter model.
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.
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.

Lecturers:

• Dmitry A. Jdanov (HSE University; Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research)
• Vladimir M. Shkolnikov (HSE University; Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research)
• Sergey  Timonin (HSE University)
• Marina Vergeles (Hse University)

Day 1

• Life table construction
• Reading data from the HMD
• Building the life table according to HMD protocol
• Implementing Kannisto function for older ages
• Calculating confidence intervals for life expectancy

Day 2

• Inequality measures
• Measures of age-at-death variation (i.e. standard deviation, life disparity, variance, IQR)

Day 3

• Prevalence-based measure of healthy life expectancy (Sullivan)
• Multiple decrement life tables
• Cause-deleted life tables

Day 4

• Methods of decomposition
• Kitagawa CDR
• Arriaga/Andreev/Pressat (discrete)
• Step-wise replacement
• Adding causes of death

Day 5

• Mortality forecasting
• Lee-Carter method and package demography