Period and Cohort Effects on Elderly Mortality: A New Relational Model for Smoothing Mortality Surfaces

This study investigates the relative importance of period and cohort effects in adult and elderly mortality in Italy and Sweden in the second half of the 20th century. For this purpose, we devised a two-dimensional semi-parametric model for mortality surfaces that produces good fit to the data and robust estimates of the period and cohort parameters. The findings of this study show that period effects have been of primary importance in the process of mortality reduction at adult and old ages observed in the last decades. The effects of early-life conditions are modest and often not statistically significant.