Mortality Comparisons and Age: a New Mortality Curve

Abstract

This paper introduces a new mortality curve to illustrate and measure mortality and its relation to age. The curve draws on the ‘Lorenz-Gini’ framework of income-inequality measurement. The paper advances the cause of a ‘mortality curve’ analogous to the Lorenz curve, and a ‘mortality-inefficiency’ measure analogous to the Gini coefficient of inequality. The idea is to supplement the Crude Death Rate (CDR) with a mortality-inefficiency measure in a composite index of mortality which attends to both the mean and the dispersion of an age-distribution of deaths.