Assessing the effects of mortality reduction on population ageing

"This article presents a new method for decomposing age distribution changes into changes in the number of births and changes in age-specific rates of mortality and migration. The method is developed on the basis of the equation for the age-specific growth rate proposed by Horiuchi and Preston (1988). Using this method, it is shown that the increase in the proportion of women in Japan during 1970-1980 is mainly due to the reduction of mortality, particularly at old ages. The results lend support to the proposed idea that the pattern of age structure changes in developed countries is now shifting from fertility-dominated to mortality-dominated ageing." This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America.