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Mortality in early modern Scotland: the life expectancy of advocates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Rab Houston
Rab Houston
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, University of St Andrews.
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Continuity and Change , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , May 1992 , pp. 47 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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14 This article uses a method adapted by Jim Oeppen from Turnbull, B. W., ‘The empirical distribution function with arbitrarily grouped, censored and truncated data’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series B 38 (1976), 290–5.Google Scholar This concerns estimations from incomplete observations. Such a method is necessary because advocates enter observation at different ages, meaning that the data will be truncated. If no allowance was made for truncation, changes in the age at entry would cause apparent but unreal changes in life expectancy. For example, some advocates will enter at 25, others at a much later age. In order to estimate the probability of surviving to a given age, say 65, the mortality of all advocates who lived for some years between, say, age 25 and 65 is used to impute the size of a ‘phantom cohort’ that entered at 25 which would be just big enough to ensure that one person survived to age 65. This is then used to complete the observation of a man who entered the Faculty at, say, 35 and so on for all those who did not enter at 25. The imputation method is based on internal consistency and results in a life table which is most consistent with the complete and ‘incomplete’ observations at every age.

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