Lifespan Inequality
Lifespan inequality measures how unequally length of life is distributed within a population — the spread of the life-table ages at death, not just their average. Two populations can share the same life expectancy yet differ sharply in how predictable death is: in one nearly everyone reaches old age, in the other deaths are scattered across all ages. A family of measures — life disparity (e†), the standard deviation of age at death, the life-table Gini coefficient, and Keyfitz entropy — quantifies this dispersion, complementing life expectancy with a measure of how fairly survival is shared.
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Sources
- Vaupel, J. W., & Canudas-Romo, V. (2003). Decomposing change in life expectancy: A bouquet of formulas in honor of Nathan Keyfitz's 90th birthday. Demography, 40(2), 201–216. DOI: 10.1353/dem.2003.0018 ↗
- Preston, S. H., Heuveline, P., & Guillot, M. (2001). Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes. Blackwell. ISBN: 9781557864512
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Lifespan Inequality (Variation in Age at Death). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/demography/lifespan-inequality
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- Healthy Life ExpectancyDemography↔ compare
- Keyfitz EntropyDemography↔ compare
- Lee-Carter ModelDemography↔ compare
- Life TableDemography↔ compare