Metrics details. Life expectancy is of increasing prime interest for a variety of reasons. In many countries, life expectancy is growing linearly, without any indication of reaching a limit. The state of North RhineβWestphalia NRW in Germany with its 54 districts is considered here where the above mentioned growth in life expectancy is occurring as well.
However, there is also empirical evidence that life expectancy is not growing linearly at the same level for different regions. To explore this situation further a likelihood-based cluster analysis is suggested and performed. The modelling uses a nonparametric mixture approach for the latent random effect. Maximum likelihood estimates are determined by means of the EM algorithm and the number of components in the mixture model are found on the basis of the Bayesian Information Criterion.
Regions are classified into the mixture components clusters using the maximum posterior allocation rule. For the data analyzed here, 7 components are found with a spatial concentration of lower life expectancy levels in a centre of NRW, formerly an enormous conglomerate of heavy industry, still the most densely populated area with Gelsenkirchen having the lowest level of life expectancy growth for both genders.
The paper offers some explanations for this fact including demographic and socio-economic sources. This case study shows that life expectancy growth is widely linear, but it might occur on different levels. Peer Review reports. Life expectancy in Germany is increasing unbrokenly at linear rate. This corresponds to a worldβwide trend β despite controversial statements see also Oeppen and Vaupel [ 1 ] for this point.
But lifeβexpectancy does not increase on the same level for everyone. Continuous analyses of these data are an important part of the health reporting in NRW. Results show which health gains are realized and where higher efforts are needed. The paper suggests a cluster-analytic approach to identify the various components of different levels of growth in life-expectancy.
