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Abstract:
Life tables are used to describe and understand the population dynamics of a species. This
information is important in conservation studies (reintroduction of species), agriculture
(reduction of pest species), and human health (following epidemics). Using reintroduction of
a species as an example, life tables can indicate when a breeding population has been
established. This is a study on meaning & explanation of life table. It includes definition,
types, formation & example of life table.

Key Words:
Demographic Mortality Variables Cohort
Static Reproductive Interval Survival
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Definition of life table:

A table showing the number of persons who, of a given number born or living at a specified
age, live to attain successive higher ages, together with the number who die in the intervals.

The life table is one way of summarizing key demographic variables, including age-specific
mortality, survivorship, and expectation of further life. Once these data are compiled, we can
use them to investigate demographic patterns and processes, such as differences in the
survival rate or life expectancy of different groups of organisms. When this information is
combined with fecundity data, life-tables can be used to estimate rates of population change
(e.g., r, , and Ro).

Types of life table:

1. Complete life table: It is made between 1 year life based on life expectancy. It is
time spoiling & vulnerable.
2. Abridged life table: To remove errors & vulnerability of complete life table, the
abridged life table is generally made. It can be produced by two types:
3. Current life table: In this life table, hypothetical cohort is used. Various parts of this
life table are synthetic.

Formation of life table:

The simplest way to construct a life table is to follow a group (or cohort) of organisms from
birth, recording the age at which each individual dies, until all individuals of the original
cohort have died. The result of this approach is termed a dynamic life table. However, cohort
data are difficult and time-consuming to obtain, because the table cannot be completed until
the entire cohort has diedwhich could take decades, in the case of elephants or seabirds, or
even centuries, as for trees such as bristlecone pines (which may live 2,500
years).Consequently, ecologists often construct life tables using other types of information.
The approach well use is to gather data on age of death of a sample of individuals, and to use
these data to estimate mortality rates and to calculate other vital statistics. This approach
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generally yields a static life table, with entries that are age-specific, even though the sample is
a composite, made up of individuals who started life at different times.

Static (Vertical) Life Table Based on Living Individuals

Most organisms have more complex life histories than found in the above example, and while
it is possible to follow a single cohort from birth to death, it often too costly or time-
consuming does so. Another, less accurate, method is the static, or vertical, life table. Rather
than following a single cohort, the static table compares population size from different
cohorts, across the entire range of ages, at a single point in time. Static tables make two
important assumptions: 1) the population has a stable age structure that is, the proportion of
individuals in each age class does not change from generation to generation, and 2) the
population size is, or nearly, stationary.

Static (Vertical) Life Table Based on Mortality Records

Static life tables can also be made from knowing, or estimating, age at death for individuals
from a population. This can be a useful technique for secretive large mammals (e.g., moose)
from temperate regions where it is difficult to sample the living members. Because the
highest mortality of large herbivores occurs during the winter, an early spring survey of
carcasses from starvation and predator kills can yield useful information in constructing a life
table.

Population Features That Can Be Calculated from Life Tables:

Besides R0, the basic reproductive rate, several other population characteristics can be
determined from life tables. Some of the most common features are the cohort generation
time (Tc), life expectancy (ex), and the intrinsic growth rate (r).Cohort generation time is
quite easy to obtain from our first example, a semelparous annual life cycle (Tc= 1 year), but
generation time is less obvious for more complex life cycles. Generation time can be denied
as the average length of time between when an individual is born and the birth of its
offspring. Therefore, it can be calculated by summing all the lengths of time to offspring
production for the entire cohort divided by the total offspring produced by the survivors:

Life expectancy is a useful way of expressing the probability of living x number of years
beyond a given age. We usually encounter life expectancy in newspaper articles comparing
the mean length of life for individuals of various populations. However, this value is actually
the life expectancy at birth. One can also calculate the mean length of life beyond any given
age for the population. Life expectancy is a somewhat complicated calculation. Because lx is
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only the proportion surviving to the beginning of a particular age class, we must first
calculate the average proportion alive at that age (Lx):

Next, the total number of living individuals at age x and beyond (Tx) is:

Finally, the average amount of time yet to be lived by members surviving to a particular age
(ex) is:

The basic reproduction rate (R0) converts the initial population size to the new size one
generation later as:

If R0 remains constant from generation to generation, then we can also use it to predict
population size several generations in the future. To predict poplulation size at any future
time, it is more convenient to use a parameter that already takes generation time into account.
This term is r, the intrinsic rate of natural increase, and it can be calculated (or approximated
for complex life cycles) by the following equation:

Example:
The following table provides an example of an abridged life table:
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Table 7-1
Example of an Abridged Life Table

Age Interval nQx lx ndx Lx Tx e

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5 Column 6 Column 7

00-01 0.02592 100000 2592 97408 6892855 68.93

1-5 0.0042 97408 409 387996 6795447 69.76
5-10 0.00232 96999 225 483869 6407451 66.06
10-15 0.00201 96774 195 482897 5923582 61.21
15-20 0.00443 96579 428 480757 5440686 56.33
20-25 0.00611 96151 587 477820 4959928 51.58
25-30 0.00632 95564 604 474800 4482108 46.90
30-35 0.00654 94960 621 471695 4007308 42.20
35-40 0.01098 94339 1036 466516 3535613 37.48
40-45 0.01765 93303 1647 458282 3069097 32.89
45-50 0.02765 91656 2534 445610 2610815 28.48
50-55 0.04387 89122 3910 426061 2165205 24.29
55-60 0.05987 85212 5102 400553 1739144 20.41
60-65 0.09654 80111 7734 361884 1338591 16.71
65-70 0.13654 72377 9882 312472 976707 13.49
70-75 0.18765 62494 11727 253837 664235 10.63
75-80 0.25439 50767 12915 189263 410399 8.08
80-85 0.37887 37853 14341 117557 221135 5.84
85-90 0.47898 23511 11261 61250 103578 4.41
90-95 0.57908 12250 7094 25781 42329 3.46
95+ 1 5156 5156 16548 16548 3.21

The columns of the life table include:

Column 1
Age interval, x to x+n: Age interval between exact ages for each row of the life table.
Column 2
nQx: The proportion of the population in each age interval that is alive at the
beginning of the interval and dead before reaching the end of the interval. The
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proportion is computed from the observed mortality rates of an actual population and
is used to derive the remaining columns of the life table.
Column 3
lx: The number of persons alive at the beginning of the age interval
Column 4
ndx: The number of persons dying during the age interval
Column 5
Lx: The total number of person-years in the stationary population for each age
interval. It can be viewed as the average population size between birthdays, taking
into account the distribution of deaths throughout the year.
Column 6
Tx: This column records the stationary population in the indicated age interval and all
subsequent intervals. It is the cumulative sum of the nLx values. It can be viewed as
the total number of person-years that would be lived for a particular age cohort if the
cohort were to progress through the remainder of the life table.

Columns 5 and 6 represent a hypothetical stationary population which has experienced:

a. No migration

b. Constant age-specific number of births each year

c. An increase by a constant number of births each year and decrease by the same
constant number of deaths each year

d. Stationary age structure size In each age group, the number of person-years lived is
always the same as that of the original life table cohort.

When a person dies or enters the next higher age interval, their place is immediately taken by
someone entering from the next lower age interval. The number of persons in the age interval
remains the same. The values in the Lx and Tx columns are based on the assumption that an
additional 100,000 persons are added to the table annually and are subject to the mortality
rates computed in the nQx column. The population is considered stationary because the total
population and the number of people in each age interval do not change.

Column 7
e: This column indicates the average remaining lifetime for a given age group.

7.3 Calculating Survival Rates:

Life tables are used to calculate survival rates. For population projections, 5-year survival
rates are computed. For estimates of net migration, 10-year survival rates are calculated.
Calculations of survival rates rely on two columns in the life table, Lx and Tx.

Using the abridged life table presented in Table 7-1, calculate 5-year survival rates as shown
in Equation 7-1.
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Equation 7-1
5-year Survival Rate

To calculate a rate to survive women ages 2529 into the next 5-year age cohort (3034), use
the following numbers from the Lx column in Table 7-1, as shown in the following example.

Example of Equation 7-1

Surviving One Age Group into the Next Year Age Cohort

This process is repeated for most age groups; the first and last age groups are exceptions.
Slight modifications are required to survive these two groups into the next age group.

Equation 7-2 provides an example of survival rates for those in the first age interval, 04.
Note that the initial size of the first cohort is multiplied by 5 in the denominator. Why? There
is no earlier value for Lx for the denominator. The number 100,000 is multiplied by 5
because, hypothetically, 100,000 new born babies are added to the table each year for a 5-
year period.

Equation 7-2
surviving the youngest age cohort

For the last age cohort (7585+),use the Tx column to create a 5-year survival rate as shown
in Equation 7-3. The value of Tx represents the number of survivors in a particular age group
and all older age groups.
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Equation 7-3
surviving the oldest age cohort

So, we can calculate various population factors from life tables in such ways.
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References:
Edwards, R.D. and Tuljapurkar, S. (2005). Inequality in life spans and a new
perspective on mortality convergence across industrialized countries. Population and
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Demography 23(2): 275282.
Vaupel, J.W. (1986). How change in age-specific mortality affects life expectancy.
Population Studies 40(1): 147157.
Edwards, R.D. and Tuljapurkar, S. (2005). Inequality in life spans and a new
perspective on mortality convergence across industrialized countries. Population and
Development Review 31(4): 645674.
Wilmoth, J.R. and Horiuchi, S. (1999). Rectangularization revisited: Variability of
age at death with human populations. Demography 36(4): 475495.
Zhang, Z.; Vaupel, J. W. (2009). The age separating early deaths from late deaths.
Demographic Research, 20:29, 721-730.