Mortality Comparisons 'At a Glance': A Mortality Concentration Curve and Decomposition Analysis for India

Abstract

This paper uses the concept of the M-Curve, which plots the cumulative proportion of deaths against the corresponding cumulative proportion of the population (arranged in ascending order of age), and associated measures, to examine mortality experience in India. A feature of the M-curve is that it can be combined with an explicit value judgement (an aversion to early deaths) in order to make welfare-loss comparisons. Empirical comparisons over time, and between regions and genders, are made. Furthermore, in order to provide additional perspective, selective results for the UK and New Zealand are reported. It is also shown how the M-curve concept can be used to separate the contributions to overall mortality of changes over time (or differences between population groups) to the population age distribution and age-specific mortality rates.