Uses of the Life Table in Public Health

In two of his more recent papers, Spiegelman stressed that it was necessary to examine the experience of generations rather than the cross section of period experience to obtain a better understanding of the underlying changes in mortality with advance in age.l 2 As an example of how current life tables can sometimes present a misleading picture, Spiegelman cited the case of tuberculosis: current life tables pointed to a rise in death rates with advancing age whereas generation experience indicates a decline in tuberculosis mortality at the older ages. The age pattern of generation mortality from specific causes of death can differ significantly from that deduced on the basis of current life tables, depending on the trends in the age-specific death rates. In a broader context Spiegelman observed that the mortality experience of white males in the United States has