Abstract
A specification of mortality or survivorship provides respective explicit details about mortality's or survivorship's relationships with one or more other variables (e.g., age, sex, etc.). Previous studies have discovered and analyzed diverse specifications of mortality or survivorship; these discoveries and analyses suggest that additional specifications of mortality or survivorship have yet to be discovered and analyzed. In consistency with previous research, multivariable limited powered polynomials regression analyses of mortality and survivorship of selected humans (Swedes, 1760–2008) and selected insects (caged medflies) show age-specific, historical-time-specific, environmental-context-specific, and sex-specific mortality and survivorship. These analyses also present discoveries of hitherto unknown lifespan-specific, contemporary-aggregate-size-specific, and lifespan-aggregate-size-specific mortality and survivorship. The results of this investigation and results of previous research help identify variables for inclusion in regression models of mortality or survivorship. Moreover, these results and results of previous research strengthen the suggestion that additional specifications of mortality or survivorship have yet to be discovered and analyzed, and they also suggest that specifications of mortality and survivorship indicate corresponding specifications of frailty and vitality. Furthermore, the present analyses reveal the usefulness of a multivariable limited powered polynomials regression model-building approach. This article shows that much has yet to be learned about specifications of mortality or survivorship of diverse kinds of individuals in diverse times and places.
Highlights
A specification of mortality or survivorship provides explicit details about mortality’s or survivorship’s relationships with one or more other variables
Previous investigations present discoveries and analyses of diverse specifications of mortality or survivorship, as illustrated by discoveries and analyses of age-specific [1–40], environmental-context-specific [10,13,17,35,41,42], historical-timespecific [17,43–47], physical-size-specific [2,10,12,20,34,35,48–53], sex-specific [10,35,54], birth-cohort-specific [23,36–40,44,47,55,56], exposure-specific [12,13,44,47,57], density-specific [10,17,41,58– 60], and disease-specific [61] mortality or survivorship. These considerations suggest that additional specifications of mortality or survivorship have yet to be discovered and analyzed
Lifespan is the total time span of an individual’s existence [21,62], such that Liq = Li = tiz – ti[0], where Liq refers to the lifespan of a natural or artificial individual i at time tq, z$q, tiz is the time of the individual’s cessation of existence, ti[0] is the time of the individual’s initiation of existence, and Li is constant for all tq in ti0:tiz
Summary
A specification of mortality or survivorship provides explicit details about mortality’s or survivorship’s relationships with one or more other variables. The lifespan aggregate includes all the individuals that are identically characterized with respect to lifespan and every other condition in a data set. The contemporary aggregate includes all the individuals that are identically characterized with respect to every condition in a data set at a point of cessation or continuation of existence, except that these individuals share or do not share an identical lifespan. These considerations indicate that the contemporary aggregate’s composition and size are time-specific and changeable through time. The size of an individual’s contemporary aggregate is equal to – or greater than – the size of this individual’s corresponding lifespan aggregate
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