Abstrakt
There was observed unprecedented decline of mortality during the 20th century in the World. This development motivated many researches all over the World to study convergence and divergence tendencies of mortality, because studies focused on these tendencies provide an unique information precisely about development of mortality in time as well as in space.
The main goal of the paper is to evaluate convergence and divergence tendencies of mortality in selected European countries since the second half of the 20th century using both, traditional and recent measures. Data from the Human Mortality Database was used for the analysis, the studied time period covered years 1959-2009 and life expectancy at birth was selected as studied indicator.
Convergence and divergence tendencies of life expectancy at birth are described by two types of measurement. First, common statistics were calculated and possibilities of visualization of convergence and divergence of mortality in boxplots are performed.
Second, measures considering population weights were calculated: (a) The Cumulative distribution of the European population by the life expectancy at birth, (b) the Percent of European population at each level of life expectancy at birth, by region and (c) the Dispersion measure of life expectancy at birth. Results indicated convergence of mortality at the beginning of the studied period, till the end of 1960s, and divergence since the end of 1960s when the polarization between Central and Eastern Europe on one side and Southern, Western and Northern Europe on the other side appeared.
Since the end of 1980s, difference between countries of Central and Eastern Europe emerged. Performed measures showed changes of convergence and divergence tendencies of mortality in selected European countries in novel, comprehensible way.
Moreover, the practical usage of the results is mentioned and in this way also the importance of this type of analysis is proved.