Mortality and Longevity Webinar: Clusters and correlations in international mortality trends

Part of the Mortality and Longevity webinar series

Over the past decades, many countries have exhibited mortality rates approximately following a piecewise linear law. This is visible in the form of steady improvements over multiple years, followed by a rather abrupt trend change, and then again stable improvements according to the new trend. We investigate trend change events across various countries and both genders in detail, revealing cross-country clusters and serial correlations in the trend change signs. This sheds light on how population mortalities may evolve with respect to each other, which can be helpful in setting correlation assumptions in internal models.