London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

During this seminar, Dr Héctor Pifarré i Arolas presents evidence from a cohort-based reassessment of 367 mortality crises in 236 countries and territories from 1751 to 2023. Period life tables remain the standard way to value loss of life in a crisis, but they treat crisis mortality as if it lasted a lifetime. Cohort methods apply crisis mortality only at the ages actually exposed. The results suggest that period measures can overstate losses by one to nearly two orders of magnitude, and that they systematically rank shorter crises as more severe and longer crises as less severe. These findings do not necessarily imply that mortality crises matter less than we thought, but that the case for their importance may rest on how deaths are concentrated in time, age, and place. 

Externals who wish to attend in person, please report to the LSHTM reception in Keppel Street at 12:30.

Speaker

Héctor Pifarré i Arolas

Héctor Pifarré i Arolas is an Assistant Professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology, the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, and European Studies at UW–Madison.

His research lies at the intersection of demography and population economics. He studies the determinants and measurement of fertility and mortality. A central theme of his recent work is the distinction between period and cohort perspectives. Demographic trends are often summarized with period measures such as life expectancy, which can mask important differences across birth cohorts. Much of his current work explores how cohort perspectives change our understanding of mortality trends, the determinants of fertility, and demographic forecasting.

Event notices

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• Please note that this session will not be recorded