Mortality forecasting using a modified CMI Mortality Projections Model for China II: Cities, towns and counties

In this paper, we conduct the study of long-term age-sex-specific mortality forecasting for subpopulations in different areas of China: cities, towns and counties. We use a modified CMI (Continuous Mortality Investigation) Mortality Projections Model, which has been discussed in Huang & Browne (Paper I), for modelling purposes. From the historical experience, we find that people in cities have lower mortality rates and higher mortality improvement rates than people in towns and counties for most ages. If this trend continues, the mortality of different areas will diverge further in the future. From the projection results, we find that there will be significant mortality and life expectancy differences between cities, towns and counties for both males and females. Sensitivity analysis for long-term rates of mortality improvement and the speed of convergence from initial to long-term rates of mortality improvement are conducted. Uncertainties are attached to the central estimates to overcome the limitation of the original CMI approach from which only deterministic results can be obtained.