Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 22, 2025
10:00
Measurement of Lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: January 7, 2013
35.1K
Mortality in Tonga over three triennia, 2010-2018
Carah Figueroa1, Christine Linhart1, Latu Fusimalohi2
1School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
BMC Public Health
|January 7, 2021
Summary
Tongan infant and under-five mortality rates remained low but life expectancy was static due to high adult mortality. Empirical data revealed lower life expectancy and higher adult mortality than international estimates.
Area of Science:
- Demography
- Public Health
- Epidemiology
Background:
- Tonga, a South Pacific Island nation, has a population of 100,651 (2016 Census).
- This study focuses on mortality trends in Tonga from 2010 to 2018.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine Tongan infant mortality rates (IMR), under-five mortality rates (U5MR), adult mortality, and life expectancy (LE) at birth.
- To compare empirical mortality data with previously published estimates.
Main Methods:
- Consolidated routinely collected mortality data (2010-2018) from multiple sources.
- Assessed data completeness using capture-recapture analysis (>95% complete).
- Estimated IMR, U5MR, adult mortality, and LE using the hypothetical cohort method and Poisson regression.
Main Results:
- Infant mortality rates (12-14/1000) and under-five mortality rates (15-19/1000) showed minimal variation.
- Life expectancy at birth was 64-65 years for males and 69-70 years for females.
- Adult mortality risks were higher in men; significant increases in adult mortality were observed in women (18-21%).
Conclusions:
- Life expectancy in Tonga remains low and static, significantly impacted by premature adult mortality.
- Empirical data suggest lower LE and higher adult mortality than international agency estimates.
- Improving mortality data systems is crucial for accurate health monitoring and planning in Tonga.
Related Concept Videos
01:22Life Tables
340
A life table is a statistical tool that summarizes the mortality and survival patterns of a population, providing detailed insights into the likelihood of survival or death across different age intervals within a cohort. By organizing data on survival probabilities and mortality rates, life tables offer a clear snapshot of population dynamics over time. They are extensively used in demography, public health, actuarial science, and ecology to analyze life expectancy, design health interventions,...
340
01:22Applications of Life Tables
183
Life tables are versatile across various fields, providing a quantitative basis for analyzing mortality and survival rates. Whether used by demographers, actuaries, epidemiologists, or sociologists, life tables offer valuable insights into the dynamics of life and death, facilitating informed decisions in public health, insurance, conservation, and beyond. Their broad applicability highlights the interconnectedness of demographic data with practical outcomes in everyday life and strategic...
183
01:20Actuarial Approach
194
The actuarial approach, a statistical method originally developed for life insurance risk assessment, is widely used to calculate survival rates in clinical and population studies. This method accounts for participants lost to follow-up or those who die from causes unrelated to the study, ensuring a more accurate representation of survival probabilities.
Consider the example of a high-risk surgical procedure with significant early-stage mortality. A two-year clinical study is conducted,...
Consider the example of a high-risk surgical procedure with significant early-stage mortality. A two-year clinical study is conducted,...
194
00:57Population Growth
26.6K
Population size is dynamic, increasing with birth rates and immigration, and decreasing with death rates and emigration. In ideal conditions with unlimited resources, populations can increase exponentially, which plots as a J-shaped growth rate curve of population size against time. This type of curve is characteristic of newly-introduced invasive species, or populations that have suffered catastrophic declines and are rebounding.
26.6K
02:20Longitudinal Research
12.9K
Sometimes we want to see how people change over time, as in studies of human development and lifespan. When we test the same group of individuals repeatedly over an extended period of time, we are conducting longitudinal research. Longitudinal research is a research design in which data-gathering is administered repeatedly over an extended period of time. For example, we may survey a group of individuals about their dietary habits at age 20, retest them a decade later at age 30, and then again...
12.9K
01:18Survival Curves
460
Survival curves are graphical representations that depict the survival experience of a population over time, offering an intuitive way to track the proportion of individuals who remain event-free at each time point. These curves are widely used in fields such as medicine, public health, and reliability engineering to visualize and compare survival probabilities across different groups or conditions.
The Kaplan-Meier estimator is the most common method for constructing survival curves. This...
The Kaplan-Meier estimator is the most common method for constructing survival curves. This...
460