On the Construction and Use of the combined Marriage and Mortality Tables for Widowers

Extract

As the marriage rate among widowers depends not only on their age, but also upon the length of time for which they have been widowers, it was necessary to form the combined marriage and mortality table for widowers on principles analogous to those adopted by Mr. Sprague in the construction of his Select Life Tables, where the rate of mortality among assured lives for each age at entry was, after the lapse of five or a less number of years, joined on to the H^M(5) rate of mortality. The first step, therefore, was to form a combined marriage and mortality table for chronic widowers—that is to say, those among whom the marriage rate has reached its ultimate magnitude; in other words, to find (wl)_x, the number of widowers alive and still unmarried at any age, and number marrying, (wm)_x, and dying, (wd)_x, in the following year.