AccScience Publishing / IJPS / Volume 2 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.18063/IJPS.2016.01.005
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Life expectancy at birth and life disparity: an assessment of sex differentials in mortality in India

Akansha Singh1* Laishram Ladusingh2
© Invalid date by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

This study aims to examine the sex differentials in life expectancy at birth and life disparity, and to estimate the age-specific contribution of the differences for India and its major states. Life dispari-ty measures the variation in the distribution of deaths, and life expectancy at birth measures the average length of life. Complete life tables generated from death rates and abridged life tables of the Sample Reg-istration System in India from 1970–1975 to 2006–2010 were used to fulfill the research goals. Stepwise replacement algorithm was used for the decomposition of sex differences in life expectancy at birth and in life disparity. The results indicate that the increase in life expectancy at birth and decline in life disparity was higher for females. The sex differential was more prominent in urban areas than in rural areas. A ma-jority of the states in India experienced changes in the direction and magnitude of sex differentials in life expectancy at birth and life disparity from 1970–1975 to 2006–2010. The sex differentials in life expec-tancy at birth and life disparity in 1970–1975 were primarily attributed to child mortality, whereas the sex differentials in recent decades were attributed to adult mortality.
        

Keywords
adult mortality
child mortality
decomposition
India
life expectancy at birth
life disparity
life table
sex differential
References
[1]

Arokiasamy A. (2004). Regional patterns of sex bias and excess female child mortality in India. Population, 59(6): 833–863. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3654897

[2]

Andreev E M, Shkolnikov V M, and Begun A Z. (2002). Algorithm for decomposition of differences between aggre-gate demographic measures and its application to life expectancies, healthy life expectancies, parity progression ratios and total fertility rates. Demographic Research, 7: 499–522. http://dx.doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2002.7.14

[3]

Bhat P N M. (2002). Completeness of India’s sample registration system: an assessment using the general growth-balance method. Population Studies, 56(2): 119–134. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324720215930

[4]

Bhat PNM. (1987). Mortality in India: levels, trends and patterns (Thesis). University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI8725140.

[5]

Canudas-Romo V, Saikia N, and Diamond-Smith N. (2015). The contribution of age-specific mortality towards male and female life expectancy differentials in India and selected States, 1970–2013. Asia-Pacific Population Journal, 30(2): 1–20.

[6]

Chaurasia A R. (2010). Mortality transition in India 1970–2005. Asian Population Studies, 6(1): 47–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441731003603421

[7]

Claeson M, Bos E R, Mawji T, et al. (2000). Reducing child mortality in India in the new millennium. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 78(10): 1192–1199. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0042-96862000001000005

[8]

Dyson T. (1984). Excess male mortality in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 19(10): 422–426. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/4373035>

[9]

Edwards R D and Tuljapurkar S. (2005). Inequality in life spans and a new perspective on mortality convergence across industrialized countries. Population and Development Review, 31(4): 645–674. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2005.00092.x

[10]

Greville T N E. (1943). Short methods of constructing abridged life tables. In Smith D P and Keyfitz N (Eds.), Ma-thematical Demography (pp. 53–60). Germany: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-81046-6_8

[11]

Heligman L and Pollard J H. (1980). The age pattern of mortality. Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 107(1): 49–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020268100040257

[12]

Jha P, Gajalakshmi V, Gupta P C, et al. (2006). Prospective study of one million deaths in India: rationale, design, and validation. PLoS Medicine, 3(2): e18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030018

[13]

Kannisto V. (2001). Mode and dispersion of the length of life. Population: an English Selection, 13(1): 159–171.

[14]

Keyfitz N. (1977). Applied Mathematical Demography. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

[15]

Kostaki A and Panousis V. (2001). Expanding an abridged life table. Demographic Research, 5(1): 1–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2001.5.1

[16]

Krishnan A, Nawi Ng, Kapoor S K, et al. (2012). Temporal trends and gender differentials in causes of childhood deaths at Ballabgarh, India – need for revisiting child survival strategies. BMC Public Health, 12: 555. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-555

[17]

Mathers C D, Fat D M, Inoue M, et al. (2005). Counting the dead and what they died from: an assessment of the global status of cause of death data. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 83(3): 171–177. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0042-96862005000300009

[18]

Mitra S. (1978). A short note on the taeuber paradox. Demography, 15(4): 621–623. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2061211

[19]

Moser K, Shkolnikov V, and Leon D A. (2005). World mortality 1950–2000: divergence replaces convergence from the late 1980s. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 83(3): 202–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0042-96862005000300013

[20]

National Commission on Population. (2001). Report of the working group on registration of births, deaths, and mar-riages. New Delhi, India: National Commission on Population.

[21]

Office of the Registrar General (ORG). (1984). SRS based abridged life tables 1970–1975, Census of India 1981, occasional papers No. 1 of 1984. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[22]

Office of the Registrar General (ORG). (1985). SRS based abridged life tables 1976–1980, Census of India 1981, occasional papers No. 1 of 1985. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[23]

Office of the Registrar General (ORG). (1989). SRS based abridged life tables 1981–1985, Census of India 1981, occasional papers No. 1 of 1989. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[24]

Oksuzyan A, Crimmins E, Saito Y, et al. (2010). Cross-national comparison of sex differences in health and mortality in Denmark, Japan and the US. European Journal of Epidemiology, 25(7): 471–480. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10654-010-9460-6

[25]

Rajaratnam J K, Marcus J R, Levin-Rector A, et al. (2010). Worldwide mortality in men and women aged 15–59 years from 1970 to 2010: A systematic analysis. The Lancet, 375(9727): 1704–1720. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60517-X

[26]

Registrar General of India (RGI). (1994). SRS based abridged life tables 1986–1990, SRS analytical studies report series, occasional papers No. 1 of 1994. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[27]

Registrar General of India (RGI). (1996–2010). Sample registration system statistical reports. New Delhi, India: Of-fice of the Registrar General.

[28]

Registrar General of India (RGI). (1998). SRS based abridged life tables 1991–1995, SRS analytical studies report no. 1 of 1998. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[29]

Registrar General of India (RGI). (2006). Maternal mortality in India: 1997–2003: Trends, causes and risk factors. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[30]

Registrar General of India (RGI). (2012). SRS based abridged life tables 2003–2007 to 2006–2010. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[31]

Registrar General of India (RGI). (2013). Special bulletin on maternal mortality in India 2010–2012. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[32]

Registrar General of India (RGI). (2014). Sample registration system statistical report 2013. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[33]

Registrar General of India (RGI) and Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR). (2015). Causes of Death in India 2010–2013. New Delhi, India: Office of the Registrar General.

[34]

Roy T K and Lahiri S. (1988). Recent levels and trends in mortality in India and its major states: An analysis based on SRS data. In Srinivasan  K and Mukerji S (Eds.), Dynamics of population and family welfare 1987 (pp. 279–349). Bombay, India: Himalaya Publishing House.

[35]

Saikia N and Ram F. (2010). Determinants of adult mortality in India. Asian Population Studies, 6(2): 153–171. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441730.2010.494441

[36]

Saikia N, Jasilionis D, Ram F, et al. (2011). Trends and geographic differentials in mortality under age 60 in India. Population Studies, 65(1): 73–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2010.534642

[37]

Saikia N, Singh A, and Ram F. (2010). Has child mortality in India really increased in the last two decades?. Eco-nomic and Political Weekly, 45(51): 62–70.

[38]

Saikia N, Singh A, Jasilionis D, et al. (2013). Explaining the trends in rural-urban gap in infant mortality in India. Demographic Research, 29(18): 473–506. http://dx.doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2013.29.18

[39]

Shkolnikov V M and Andreev E M. (2010). Age-decomposition of a difference between two populations for any life-table quantity in excel, MPIDR Technical Report, 2010-002. Germany: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Retrieved on January 10, 2011 from http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/technicalreports/tr-2010-002.pdf.

[40]

Shkolnikov VM, Andreev EM and Begun AZ 2003, Gini coefficient as a life table function: computation from dis-crete data, decomposition of differences and empirical examples, Demographic Research, 8: 305–358. http://dx.doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2003.8.11.

[41]

Shkolnikov V M, Andreev E M, Zhang Z, et al. (2011). Losses of expected lifetime in the United States and other developed countries: methods and empirical analyses. Demography, 48(1): 211–239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0015-6

[42]

Singh A and Ladusingh L. (2013). Increasing life expectancy and convergence of age at death in India. Genus, 69(1): 83–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.4402/genus-488

[43]

Singh A and Ladusingh L. (2016). Measuring early life disparity in India. Journal of Biosocial Science, 48(4): 457–471. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021932015000383

[44]

Smits J and Monden C. (2009). Length of life inequality around the globe. Social Science and Medicine, 68(6): 1114–1123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.12.034

[45]

Subramanian S V, Nandy S, Irving M, et al. (2006). The mortality divide in India: The differential contributions of gender, caste, and standard of living across the life course. American Journal of Public Health, 96(5): 818–825. http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2004.060103

[46]

Thomas M B and James K S. (2014). Changes in mortality and human longevity in Kerala: are they leading to the advanced stage?. Global Health Action, 7: 22938. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/gha.v7.22938

[47]

United Nations Population Division. (2003). MORTPAK for Windows, Version 4. New York: United Nations.

[48]

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Population Division. (2015). World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision, Key findings and advance tables, Working Paper No. ESA/P/WP.241. DVD Edition. New York: United Nations.

[49]

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and World Health Organization (WHO). (2007). Life expectancy at birth. Retrieved on July 22, 2016 from http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodology_sheets/health/life_expectancy.pdf.

[50]

van Raalte A A, Martikainen P, and Myrskylä M. (2014). Lifespan variation by occupational class: Compression or stagnation over time?. Demography, 51(1): 73–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-013-0253-x

[51]

Vaupel J W, Zhang Z, and van Raalte A A. (2011). Life expectancy and disparity: an international comparison of life table data. BMJ Open, 1(1): e000128. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen–2011– 000128

[52]

Wilmoth J R and Horiuchi S. (1999). Rectangularization revisited: variability of age at death within human popula-tions. Demography, 36(4): 475–495. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2648085

[53]

Wu F, Guo Y, Chatterji S, et al. (2015). Common risk factors for chronic non-communicable diseases among older adults in China, Ghana, Mexico, India, Russia and South Africa: the study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) wave 1. BMC Public Health, 15: 88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-1407-0.

[54]

Yamunadevi A and Sulaja S. (2016). Old age mortality in India — an exploration from life expectancy at age 60. International Journal of Asian Social Science, 6(12): 698–704. http://dx.doi.org/10.18488/journal.1/2016.6.12/1.12.698.704

[55]

Zhang Z and Vaupel J W. (2009). The age separating early deaths from late deaths. Demographic Research, 20(29): 721–730. http://dx.doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2009.20.29

Share
Back to top
International Journal of Population Studies, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8606 Print ISSN: 2424-8150, Published by AccScience Publishing