Information on future mortality trends is essential for population forecasts, public health policy, actuarial studies, and many other purposes. Realising the importance of such needs, this volume contains contributions to the theory and practice of forecasting mortality in the relatively favourable circumstances in developed countries of Western Europe.
In this context techniques from mathematical statistics and econometrics can provide useful descriptions of past mortality. The naive forecast obtained by extrapolating a fitted model may give as good a forecast as any but forecasting by...