Life expectancies in Portugal (81.3 years for females and 74.9 for males) and Spain (83.5 years for females and 76.9 for males) in 2005 rank among the lowest in Western Europe (Portuguese males) and the highest (Spanish females), respectively. This article studies the converging trends in...

In the past six decades, lifespan inequality has varied greatly within and among countries even while life expectancy has continued to increase. How and why does mortality change generate this diversity? We derive a precise link between changes in age-specific mortality and lifespan inequality,...

Entropy, or the gradual decline through age in the survivorship function, reflects the considerable amount of variance in length of life found in any human population. Part is due to the well-known variation in life expectancy between groups: large differences according to race, sex,...