Estimation of the Parameters of a Survival Process with Downward Jumps in Life Table

Parameters for the birth and death diffusion life table model subject to downward jumps randomly occurring at a constant rate are estimated. The jump magnitudes have a beta distribution with support [0, lx], where lx is the total number of survivors prior to the jump. The estimation method is maximum likelihood. The Cramer-Rao Lower bound and the asymptotic distribution for the MLE are derived. The model is applied to the U.S. men's population from 1900 to 1999.