%0 Journal Article
%T Lee-Carter mortality forecasting: a multi-country comparison of variants and extensions
%A Heather Booth
%A Piet de Jong
%A Rob J. Hyndman
%A Leonie Tickle
%J Demographic Research
%D 2006
%I Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
%X We compare the short- to medium-term accuracy of five variants or extensions of the Lee-Carter method for mortality forecasting. These include the original Lee-Carter, the Lee-Miller and Booth-Maindonald-Smith variants, and the more flexible Hyndman-Ullah and De Jong-Tickle extensions. These methods are compared by applying them to sex-specific populations of 10 developed countries using data for 1986-2000 for evaluation. All variants and extensions are more accurate than the original Lee-Carter method for forecasting log death rates, by up to 61%. However, accuracy in log death rates does not necessarily translate into accuracy in life expectancy. There are no significant differences among the five methods in forecast accuracy for life expectancy.
%K functional data
%K Lee-Carter method
%K mortality forecasting
%K nonparametric smoothing
%K principal components
%K state space
%U http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol15/9/