Abstract
Census data demonstrate that life expectancy has improved over the last 100 years. In this paper, we attempt to predict life expectancy in the USA by both race( black people, white people, and the general population) and gender. In doing this, we employ methods of cointegration analysis that have appeared recently in the actuarial and demography literature. We investigate the dependence(through cointegration analysis) between the six variables and it shows a better fit with better performance than others models such as VAR and ARIMA in predicting life expectancy at birth by race. We show that there are similar long-term trends in the average life expectancy of the members of all the main racial groups residing in the USA. Our study offers new insights to demographers with regard to predicting the average future life expectancy of members of different racial groups.
Mathematics Subject Classification: J11; J14; J15; C01; C52; C53
Keywords: Life expectancy at birth; race; forecasting; VECM; ARIMA.