A modal age at death approach to forecasting mortality

Recent studies have shown that there are some advantages in forecasting mortality with other indicators than death rates. In particular, the age-at-death distribution provides readily available information on central longevity measures: mean, median and mode, as well as information on lifespan variation. The modal age at death has been increasing linearly since the second half of the 20th century, providing a strong basis to extrapolate past trends. We develop a model to forecast the age-at-death distribution that directly forecasts the modal age at death and lifespan variation while accounting for dependence between ages. We forecast mortality at age 40 and above in six Western European countries. The introduced model increases forecast accuracy compared with other forecasting models and provides consistent trends in life expectancy and lifespan variation at age 40 over time.