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On the Calculation of Tables of Mortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

M. A. Quetelet*
Affiliation:
Académie Royale de Belgique

Extract

In order perfectly to obtain its object, a table of mortality must exhibit the actual mortality at the different ages; and to be of any practical use, we should be able from the results of the past to predict events for the future.

The actual mortality can only be directly determined by knowing the population, as well as the number of deaths, which occur at each age. There are, however, very few countries in Europe in which these two elements are sufficiently ascertained. Even in Belgium, the division of the population by ages was but imperfectly known till the census of 1846, the results of which were only published about the end of 1848. It was therefore necessary, in order to form the tables of mortality, to pass over the important element of the existing population, and frame them from the registers of deaths. In this manner, the tables of mortality which I have given successively since 1827 have been constructed on the hypothesis of a stationary population.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1854

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References

page 27 note * In the census of 1829—which, however, was made with greater exactness than is generally believed—the division of the population by ages was not sufficiently attended to. According to the different periods of life, the population was grouped in totals of five, three, or two years. This subdivision did not allow of supplying with sufficient accuracy the interpolations to correct the errors as to declaration of age which usually occur at the ages expressed in round numbers, such as 30, 40, &c.

page 27 note † Le Mémoire sur les Tables de Mortalité, which will appear in the fifth volume of the Bulletins de la Commission Centrale de Statistique du Royaume.

page 29 note * Die Gesetze der Lebensdauer. Berlin, 1839. 1 vol. 8vo.Google Scholar