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AbstractCentral and Eastern European countries faced a serious mortality crisis in the second part of the 20th century, resulting in many years of decreasing life expectancy. In the last few decades, however, this was followed by a period in which mortality improved. This dichotomy of past trends makes it difficult to forecast mortality by way of stochastic models that incorporate these countries' long-term historical data. The product–ratio model (Hyndman et al. 2013) is a model of the coherent type, which relies more closely on subpopulations with common socioeconomic backgrounds and perspectives to forecast mortality for all populations. This paper examines whether the product–ratio model is suitable for forecasting mortality in countries that have experienced serious mortality crises. To that end, we present a case study centered on Hungary, where the mortality crisis lasted three decades. The evaluation is founded on a comprehensive comparison of the product–ratio model and the classical Lee–Carter model. Our main finding is that in the Hungarian case, the product–ratio model is more reliably accurate than the classical Lee–Carter model. The superior performance of the product–ratio model may indicate that coherent models are better suited to handling mortality crises in forecasting mortality than are independent models.

Cover -- Front Matter -- Preface -- Contents -- 1 Understanding Mortality Patterns in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies -- APPENDIX: FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS OF UNCERTAINTY: MORTALITY IN AFGHANISTAN, BOSNIA, NORTH KOREA, RWANDA, AND SIERRA LEONE -- 2 The Evolution of Mortality Among Rwandan Refugees in Zaire Between 1994 and 1997 -- 3 Famine, Mortality, and Migration: A Study of North Korean Migrants in China -- 4 Methods of Determining Mortality in the Mass Displacement and Return of Emergency-Affected Populations in Kosovo, 1998-1999 -- 5 The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970-1979 -- 6 Reflections -- Index.

In this paper we test two hypotheses about mortality in early modern England: (1) that market towns had more frequent and more severe mortality crises than rural parishes; and (2) that the underlying level of mortality in market towns was higher than that in rural parishes. The data consist of annual burial totals for ten pairs of parishes, each consisting of one market town and a nearby rural parish, drawn from counties in all parts of England between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Mortality crises are identified and their severity measured using a Poisson model, which has the advantage that it can be applied both to small and large parishes without the need for ad hoc adjustments or rules. The results show clearly that mortality crises were more frequent and severe in market towns than in rural parishes, a pattern which would be predicted by epidemiological theory. The evidence that underlying mortality in market towns was higher than that in rural parishes is not as clear cut, though there is a tendency for market towns to record higher levels.

A number of studies suggest that mortality rates among East German men increased in the wake of reunification, in particular between 1989 and 1991, in some age groups by up to thirty percent. This study first examines the developments of mortality and cause of death statistics based on detailed regional data. The results indicate that there was indeed an increase in mortality rates which cannot be dismissed as a statistical artefact. Next, the paper discusses various theories explaining mortality crises and their relevance for the case of East Germany. Based on individual-level panel data the relationship between exposure to stress and overall health is shown. Apparently, the increase in mortality can be explained by the increase in individual stress levels after the economic, cultural and political consequences of reunification.

Male mortality is known to be lower than female mortality in South Asia in normal times. But it has also been observed that during crisis periods, this ordering is reversed. The experience of the 1974 famine of Bangladesh, as analyzed in this study, confirms this reversal of relative mortality rates. But the usual explanations offered for this reversal are not borne out by the data pertaining to this country. Mortality ratios by age for Bengal: 1931 and 1943

ABSTRACTData from famines from the nineteenth century onward suggest that women hold a mortality advantage during times of acute malnutrition, while modern laboratory research suggests that women are more resilient to most pathogens causing epidemic diseases. There is, however, a paucity of sex‐disaggregated mortality data for the period prior to the Industrial Revolution to test this view across a broader span of history. We offer a newly compiled database of adult burial information for 293 rural localities and small towns in the seventeenth‐century Low Countries, explicitly comparing mortality crises against 'normal' years. In contrast to expected results, we find no clear female mortality advantage during mortality spikes and, more to the point, women tended to die more frequently than men when only taking into account those years with very severe raised mortality. Gender‐related differences in levels of protection, but also exposure to vectors and points of contagion, meant that some of these female advantages were 'lost' during food crises or epidemic disease outbreaks. Responses to mortality crises such as epidemics may shine new light on gender‐based inequalities perhaps hidden from view in 'normal times' – with relevance for recent work asserting 'female agency' in the early modern Low Countries context.

To investigate how economic conditions and crises affect mortality and its predictability in industrialized countries, we review the related literature, and we forecast mortality developments in Spain, Hungary, and Russia—three countries which have recently undergone major transformation processes following the introduction of radical economic and political reforms. The results of our retrospective mortality forecasts from 1991 to 2009 suggest that our model can capture major changes in long-term mortality trends, and that the forecast errors it generates are usually smaller than those of other well-accepted models, like the Lee-Carter model and its coherent variant. This is because our approach is capable of modeling (1) dynamic shifts in survival improvements from younger to older ages over time, as well as (2) substantial changes in long-term trends by optionally complementing the extrapolated mortality trends in a country of interest with those of selected reference countries. However, the forecasting performance of our model is limited (like that of every model): e.g., if mortality becomes extremely volatile—as was the case in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—generating a precise forecast will depend more on luck than on methodology and expert judgment. In general, we conclude that, on their own, recent economic changes appear to have minor effects on life expectancy in industrialized countries, but that the effects of these changes are greater if they occur in conjunction with other major social and political changes.

This article uses aggregate analysis of parish registers to consider mortality in the early modern period. Based on a case study of the majority of the historical county of Surrey between about 1550 and 1750, it explores the nature and geographical distribution of mortality crises and seasonal patterns of mortality in normal, non-crisis, times. For the former it focusses mainly on two crises only a few years apart but with different causes, the dearth of the late 1590s and an outbreak of plague in 1603.