Life Lost, Lifesaving, and Causes of Death

Timothy L. M. Riffe, University of California, Berkeley
Aïda Solé-Auró, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

We classify cause of death impacts on population stocks in five countries using a counterfactual framework. The lives and potential years of life lost due to death are presented as a metric for describing the population impacts of death and for comparing causes of death. Lost lives and years of life may be classified by the ages in which deaths occurred, by the ages to which deaths would be postponed were they saved, by the ages through which the lost years would have been lived, or by the distribution of lost remaining lifespans. These temporal perspectives define the potential impacts of death and causes of death on population size and structure, and on the distribution of lifespans within populations.