The Life Table as a Theoretical Model:Demography in a New Key

Thomas K. Burch, University of Victoria and University of Western Ontario

The life table is most commonly described as a technique for summarising and standardising [for age] a set of age-specific death rates. Typically the rates are for a calendar year or short period – the ‘ordinary’ life table. This identification of the life table with the ordinary life table has led to considerable confusion. I propose an alternate approach in which the life table is viewed first and foremost as a theoretical model of cohort survival. This model can be specified or ‘realised’ in myriad ways of which the ordinary life table is only one. It can be used to measure actual experience but also to model hypothetical experience in computer experiments. This view of life table – and of other demographic ‘techniques’ – enhances the stature of demography as a science.