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5. Model Life Tables for Pre-Industrial Populations

Model Life Tables for Pre-Industrial Populations

Séguy I. (with the assistance of Bringe A.)

National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) Paris, France

Sėguy I.: e-mail: seguy@cepam.cnrs.fr.

Abstract

Contemporary model life tables cannot accurately reconstruct the mortality patterns experienced by pre-industrial populations, which was very different before the demographic transition. It has thus become essential to develop mortality models that are adapted to the populations studied by paleodemographers, and that fulfil a threefold objective: to be based on a sufficiently large set of tables representing early mortality at diverse times and places; to use entries that can be easily obtained from reliable and well-established anthropological indicators; and to take the population growth rate into account, despite the problem of calculating it from bone remains. This paper presents life tables based on linear regressions that link together the logarithm of mortality probabilities or link to a demographic variable like the juvenility index and/or the mean age at death of adults. These model life tables make it possible to estimate mortality by age of men, women and both sexes combined, under certain assumptions of the growth rate.

Keywords

modelisation, mortality, life tables, juvenility index, mean age at death

Цит.: Séguy I. Model Life Tables for Pre-Industrial Populations // Moscow University Anthropology Bulletin (Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seria XXIII. Antropologia), 2010; 3/2010; с. 61-89