Entropy analysis of human death uncertainty

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2021

Authors

Machado, JAT (Author) Other; António Mendes Lopes (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: Nonlinear Dynamics

Vol. 104

Pages: 3897-3911

ISSN: 0924-090X

Publisher: Springer Nature

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 0 Citations

Scopus - 0 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00V-0YJ

DOI: 10.1007/s11071-021-06503-2

Abstract (EN): Uncertainty about the time of death is part of one's life, and plays an important role in demographic and actuarial sciences. Entropy is a measure useful for characterizing complex systems. This paper analyses death uncertainty through the concept of entropy. For that purpose, the Shannon and the cumulative residual entropies are adopted. The first may be interpreted as an average information. The second was proposed more recently and is related to reliability measures such as the mean residual lifetime. Data collected from the Human Mortality Database and describing the evolution of 40 countries during several decades are studied using entropy measures. The emerging country and inter-country entropy patterns are used to characterize the dynamics of mortality. The locus of the two entropies gives a deeper insight into the dynamical evolution of the human mortality data series.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 15