Sociology 2180A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: John Graunt, Infant Mortality, Life Insurance
10 Apr 2018
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Measures the extent to which death diminishes a population as age increases. Indicates whether populations are achieving the goal of a long life. The lifetable measures survival rates which is helpful for insurance, pension, and financial arrangements and can also be used for inanimate objects. Life tables are often used in population statistics to answer questions. Invented by john graunt which showed the numbers of surviving at ages out of 100 live births (25% were living at 25 and 1% were living at 76) His table is important because it uses mortality data to determine the rate of survival at each age. Edmund halley produced an approach that was based on bills of mortality. Halley assumed that the size of a population remained constant ad found that births = deaths w/ migration having on significance. We now know that populations are hardly constant however his assumption is still the foundation for the construction of a life table because:
