Unpacking occupational and sex divides to understand the moderate progress in life expectancy in recent years (France, 2010's).

Purpose: The growth in life expectancy (LE) slows down recently in several high-income countries. Among the underlying dynamics, uneven progress in LE across social groups has been pointed out. However, these dynamics has not been extensively studied, partly due to data limitations.

Spatial disparities in the mortality burden of the covid-19 pandemic across 569 European regions (2020-2021).

Since its emergence in December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant increase in deaths worldwide. This article presents a detailed analysis of the mortality burden of the COVID-19 pandemic across 569 regions in 25 European countries. We produce age and sex-specific excess mortality and present our results using Age-Standardised Years of Life Lost in 2020 and 2021, as well as the cumulative impact over the two pandemic years.

Spatial Variation in Excess Mortality Across Europe: A Cross-Sectional Study of 561 Regions in 21 Countries.

Objective: To measure the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 at the subnational level by estimating excess mortality, defined as the increase in all-cause mortality relative to an expected baseline mortality level.

Methods: Statistical and demographic analyses of regional all-cause mortality data provided by the vital statistics systems of 21 European countries for 561 regions in Central and Western Europe. Life expectancy losses at ages 0 and 60 for males and females were estimated.

Estimating subnational excess mortality in times of pandemic. An application to French départements in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic's uneven impact on subnational regions highlights the importance of understanding its local-level mortality impact. Vital statistics are available for an increasing number of countries for 2020, 2021, and 2022, facilitating the computation of subnational excess mortality and a more comprehensive assessment of its burden. However, this calculation faces two important methodological challenges: it requires appropriate mortality projection models; and small populations imply considerable, though commonly neglected, uncertainty in the estimates.

The Dangers of Drawing Cohort Profiles From Period Data: A Research Note.

Drawing cohort profiles and cohort forecasts from grids of age-period data is common practice in demography. In this research note, we (1) show how demographic measures artificially fluctuate when calculated from the diagonals of age-period rates because of timing and cohort-size bias, (2) estimate the magnitude of these biases, and (3) illustrate how prediction intervals for cohort indicators of mortality may become implausible when drawn from Lee-Carter methods and age-period grids. These biases are surprisingly large, even when the cohort profiles are created from single-age, single-year period data.

Identifying age- and sex-specific COVID-19 mortality trends over time in six countries.

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic is characterized by successive waves that each developed differently over time and through space. We aim to provide an in-depth analysis of the evolution of COVID-19 mortality during 2020 and 2021 in a selection of countries.

Methods: We focus on five European countries and the United States.

Heterogeneity in subnational mortality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: the case of Belgian districts in 2020.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major shocks in mortality trends in many countries. Yet few studies have evaluated the heterogeneity of the mortality shocks at the sub-national level, rigorously accounting for the different sources of uncertainty.

Methods: Using death registration data from Belgium, we first assess change in the heterogeneity of districts' standardized mortality ratios in 2020, when compared to previous years.

The demography of COVID-19 deaths database, a gateway to well-documented international data.

National authorities publish COVID-19 death counts, which are extensively re-circulated and compared; but data are generally poorly sourced and documented. Academics and stakeholders need tools to assess data quality and to track data-related discrepancies for comparability over time or across countries. "The Demography of COVID-19 Deaths" database aims at bridging this gap.

The curse of the plateau. Measuring confidence in human mortality estimates at extreme ages.

In recent years, the importance of describing mortality at the limits of the life span has led to a number of relevant and controversial studies. Whereas considerable efforts have been devoted to collecting data and estimating models on the oldest-old individuals, the testing of statistical confidence about the conclusions of analyses at extreme ages has been largely neglected. How certain can we be in saying that the risk of dying increases, levels out, or, paradoxically, decreases over age 105? Can we recognize particular mortality age patterns at such high ages? In this paper, it is shown that very little can be confidently asserted about mortality at extreme ages.

Explaining regional differences in mortality during the first wave of Covid-19 in Italy.

Italy was hit harshly by the Covid-19 pandemic, registering more than 35,000 Covid-19 deaths between February and July 2020. During this first wave of the epidemic, the virus spread unequally across the country, with northern regions witnessing more cases and deaths. We investigate demographic and socio-economic factors contributing to the diverse regional impact of the virus during the first wave.

Regularities in human mortality after age 105.

Empirical research on human mortality and extreme longevity suggests that the risk of death among the oldest-old ceases to increase and levels off at age 110. The universality of this finding remains in dispute because of two main reasons: i) high uncertainty around statistical estimates generated from scarce data, and ii) the lack of country-specific comparisons. In this article, we estimate age patterns of mortality above age 105 using data from the International Database on Longevity, an exceptionally large and recently updated database comprising more than 13,000 validated records of long-lived individuals from eight populations.

Modelling and forecasting adult age-at-death distributions.

Age-at-death distributions provide an informative description of the mortality pattern of a population but have generally been neglected for modelling and forecasting mortality. In this paper, we use the distribution of deaths to model and forecast adult mortality. Specifically, we introduce a relational model that relates a fixed 'standard' to a series of observed distributions by a transformation of the age axis.

Reconstructing Long-Term Coherent Cause-of-Death Series, a Necessary Step for Analyzing Trends.

Every time the classification of causes of death is changed, time series of deaths by cause are disrupted in more or less profound ways. When changes involve only the merging of several items or splitting a single item into several new categories, the problems caused by these ruptures are not too difficult to solve. A more or less severe imbroglio occurs, however, each time a new item results from recombining portions of different split items.

State transitions: a major mortality risk for seasonal species.

Ageing results from the accumulation of multifactorial damage over time. However, the temporal distribution of this damage remains unknown. In seasonal species, transitions between seasons are critical periods of massive physiological remodelling.

Diversity of ageing across the tree of life.

Evolution drives, and is driven by, demography. A genotype moulds its phenotype's age patterns of mortality and fertility in an environment; these two patterns in turn determine the genotype's fitness in that environment. Hence, to understand the evolution of ageing, age patterns of mortality and reproduction need to be compared for species across the tree of life.