TRENDS IN LONGEVITY AND WORKING LIFE THROUGH LIFE TABLES FOR SINGAPORE : 1957-1987

Abstract

In measuring longevity, two seemingly similar but actually differing concepts, namely life span and life expectancy often come into play. The former concept tries to establish numerically the extreme limit of life, in other words, the maximum age that human beings could reach under optimum conditions. We know that few persons live over a hundred years; but owing to lack of precision in records, it is not known whether the life span has been increasing, remained constant, or has declined with time. The situation is different with respect to life expectancy, which average. measures the expected number of years to be lived, on average. Sufficiently accurate data regarding population and deaths statistics have been readily available for many countries from which life tables have been prepared. Various information like the number of survivors, probability of death at different ages and most importantly life expectancy are then readily available from the table. This exercise attempts to construct life tables for Singapore, with these, an analysis on the longevity and working life trends is then performed. To proceed with the analysis, the question of what is a life table must first be answered. Thus, certain fundamental concepts such as the definitions of cohorts (actual and synthetic), an introduction to the various types of life tables (be it complete or abridged, select or u 1timate, single or multi-decrements) are touched on in chapter I. On top of these, the various utilities of a life table are also covered. Chapter II gives an overview of the various methodologies of the construction of abridged life tables. Many methods have beer. developed over the past two centuries, but only the more important ones will be covered in this chapter. The latter part of this chapter will give an introduction to the working life table. the definition of working population and also a brief description on the methodology of the construction of such tables. The various columns of the life tables and the formulae used will be discussed in interpretation of each life table. much greater detail column will further in chapter illustrate the III. The uses of a life table. We analyse the longevity trends of Singapore from 1957-1987 in chapter IV. Not only are the average life expectancies of men and women compared, similar comparisions are also made on the male and female populations of the three main ethnic groups. The next two chapters focus on the working life table. Chapter V first gives a detail account of the methodolgy of the construction of abridged working life tables, followed by an analysis on the trends in working life in chapter VI. Comparisons of the working life expectancies and the retirement life expectancies are made between the two sexes and also the three ethnic groups. Finally, chapter VII summarizes the main topics covered in the previous chapters and also the major findings obtained throughout this research.