5 May
2007
5 May
'07
8:39 a.m.
forecasting that far into the future makes sense of course! but on the
other hand policy makers still need to make forecasts and base important
decisions on them whether or not they are uncertain. so do the new
forecasts indicate any big substantive differences from M&L, anything
policy makers should be focusing on? if you find something you can
defend, even if it doesn 't involve the whole planet, you might consider
making that the angle (possibly also) since that's what your audience
would resonnate with.
gary
On Sat, 5 May 2007, Holger Lutz Kern wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: question about abstract
Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 05:39:39 -0400
From: astokes at camail.harvard.edu
To: Holger Lutz Kern <hlk23 at cornell.edu>
References: <1178323375.463bc9af365ca at www.camail.harvard.edu>
<463BE28A.1040201 at cornell.edu>
Authors: Tom Laakso and Andy Stokes
Title: Back to the Future: Revisiting the Global Mortality Projections of
Mathers and Loncar Through Bayesian Priors
Abstract: Mathers and Loncar (2006) use the last decade of global vital
registration data to update worldwide projections of deathsthrough 2030.
Their
basic model strives to predict mortality based on just a few demographic
quantities, but is reliant uponextensive by-hand adjustment of regression
outcomes. We attempt to replace these after-the-fact corrections with a
Bayesian
approach to prior beliefs, as implemented in Girosi and King's (2001)
YourCast
package. By specifying a number of priors, we obtain a measure of
specification
uncertainty in the projections. We find that, on average, the 2030
age-specific
mortality rate can only be specified within plus/minus 50% of its measured
value. This far outweighs the plus/minus 10% allowed for in the original
study,
given different global growth scenarios. We then mapped this variance
country-by-country for each unique combination of age and
cause-of-death. While
the specification uncertainty does show strong geographic patterns,
these are
complicated functions of both age and cause-of-death. Therefore, the model
appears to be robust to prior-specification only in very specific subsets of
the global population.
Quoting Holger Lutz Kern <hlk23 at cornell.edu>:
Andy,
just send it to me; I'll forward it to the list...
Holger
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