The probabilistic life table and its applications to Canada

Traditionally, life-table variables are assigned certain values at all ages, and hence are treated as deterministic. But the survival process of the hypothetic cohort is uncertain; hence, the nature of life tables is probabilistic. This paper introduces a newly developed method to produce the probabilistic life table, in which each variable has a probability distribution rather than a sample value, at all ages except the first one. Applying the probabilistic life table to Canada, it concludes that the recent changes in mortality are statistically significant mostly at old ages, which cannot be estimated by the traditional life table.