The formal demography of kinship V: Kin loss, bereavement, and causes of death

The death of kin has psychological, physical, and economic effects on other members of a kinship network. Recently developed formal demographic models provide the deaths of kin, of any kind, at any age of a Focal individual. However, causes of death have yet to be accounted for.

Our objective is to extend the matrix kinship model to analyze losses of kin by cause of death, given age-specific schedules of risk due to each cause.

The projection matrix is enlarged to include multiple absorbing states representing the age at death and the cause of death of kin at each age of Focal. The fertility matrix is enlarged to include production of living kin and set births by dead kin to zero.

The model provides deaths experienced at each age and accumulated up to each age of Focal, by cause of death and age at death. Causes of death are competing risks, permitting the study of how the elimination of one cause displaces bereavement across kin types and age groups of the bereaved. As an example, we analyze kin death experiences attributable to each of the leading 15 causes of death in the United States non-Hispanic white female population.

Studies of the death of kin and bereavement of survivors can now take into account diverse causes of death, each with its own age schedule of risks. These results provide novel understandings of how different causes of death influence kinship structures and bereavement experiences among surviving kin.