OBJECTIVES This report presents period life tables for the United States based on age-specific death rates for the period 1999-2001. These tables are the most recent in a 100-year series of decennial life tables for the United States. METHODS This report presents complete life tables by age, race (white and black), and sex. Also presented are standard errors of the probability of dying and li...

Life expectancies at birth are routinely computed from period life tables. Such period life expectancies may be distorted by selection when comparing countries where the living conditions improved earlier (like Norway and Sweden) with countries where they improved later (like Italy and Japan). One way to get a fair comparison between the countries, is to use cohort data and consider the expecte...

Mortality estimates for many populations are derived using model life tables, which describe typical age patterns of human mortality. We propose a new system of model life tables as a means of improving the quality and transparency of such estimates. A flexible two-dimensional model was fitted to a collection of life tables from the Human Mortality Database. The model can be used to estimate fu...

Social science research finds that the only group to have experienced real economic gains over the past four decades is the top 20 percent of the income distribution. This finding, along with greater awareness of growing inequality, has renewed interest in mobility research that identifies how individuals and their progeny move into and out of upper versus lower income categories. In this study...

Female circumcision is widespread in Egypt. Research suggests that the practice persists because of a belief that circumcision will moderate female sexuality, that it will assure a girl's marriagability, and that it is sanctioned by Islam. Using data from a nationally representative survey of adolescents, this paper investigates the prevalence and social correlates of circumcision among girls a...

The half-cycle correction is often used in discrete Markov models to estimate state membership. This article shows that the correction, in addition to being unintuitive, actually produces the wrong results in many circumstances. These include quality-adjusted life year (QALY) weights and unit costs that differ by cycle. The half-cycle correction is also incompatible with discounting of the obta...