Bayesian model comparison for mortality forecasting

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Abstract Stochastic models are appealing for mortality forecasting in their ability to generate intervals that quantify uncertainties underlying the forecasts. We present a fully Bayesian implementation of the age-period-cohort-improvement (APCI) model with overdispersion, which is compared with the Lee–Carter model with cohorts. We show that naive prior specification can yield misleading inferences, where we propose Laplace prior as an elegant solution. We also perform model averaging to incorporate model uncertainty. Our findings indicate that the APCI model offers better fit and forecast for England and Wales data spanning 1961–2002. Our approach also allows coherent inclusion of multiple sources of uncertainty, producing well-calibrated probabilistic intervals.