The gender gap in life expectancy and lifespan disparity as social risk indicators for international countries: A fuzzy clustering approach

Abstract

The careful monitoring of longevity risk has a pivotal role in many fields such as the economy, demography, and social sciences. Despite the life expectancy at birth has increased steadily over the last century, it conceals gender-specific differences worldwide. Indeed, longevity risk varies according to gender-specific risk, where, a single-risk-factor effect differs from different lifestyles. This can create problems for life insurers, pension plans and social security schemes that provide benefits linked to people’s illness, death or survival. This study considers gender differences in longevity heterogeneity in 32 international countries with the aim of identifying homogeneous groups of countries. To do this, we conduct a longitudinal analysis over the period 1990–2015 using the Dynamic Time Warping-based Fuzzy C-Medoids, and two cross-sectional analyses, one for the first year of the series (1990) and one for the last (2015), using the Fuzzy C-Medoids. We analyze longevity patterns with the double lens of lifespan disparity and life expectancy gender gap. The analyses allow us to highlight the characteristics of the countries considered and their trends according to their longevity dynamics, taking into account gender-related risk differences.