Roland Rau
Biographic Data
| ID | 274135 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roland Rau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roland |
| FAMILY NAME | Rau |
| SIGNATURE | RAU R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2131-6269 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
For Whom Does Place Matter? Regional Variation in the SES-Mortality Gradient Among Retired Men in Germany
There is mounting evidence in Germany of significant mortality inequalities associated with socioeconomic status (SES). This issue holds considerable relevance for social policy debates. However, there is a paucity of research regarding how SES-mortality inequalities differ across German regions and between urban and rural areas. This is surprising, given that existing studies suggest that SES-mortality disparities can vary systematically based o…
Visualising Age-Specific Fertility Patterns in the Former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and in East Germany, 1956-2024
In this contribution, the authors visualise how fertility dynamics have changed in East Germany over a period of 69 years, covering much of the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the societal transformation following reunification and the more recent past. The Lexis surface plot provides an intuitive understanding of the underlying developments that have contributed to the change in the age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs). It rev…
Ageing populations: New challenges in longevity
The deceleration in life expectancy gains, particularly among the oldest populations, raises important questions about future trends in longevity. As physical and cognitive health change in older ages healthcare systems will face new and diverse challenges. Understanding the role of ageing and time-to-death in shaping healthcare costs will be critical for anticipating future needs in high-income countries
On the momentum of pseudostable populations
BACKGROUND: Keyfitz introduced in 1971 the “population momentum” – that is, the amount of further population growth (decline) if an instantaneous reduction (increase) of fertility to the replacement level occurred in a stable population. OBJECTIVE: We wanted to find analytical results for the momentum of pseudostable populations – that is, populations that relax the strict assumptions of the stable population model and allow fertility reductions …
Comparative Population Studies at Fifty: Views on the Past, Present, and Future
The 50th volume of Comparative Population Studies (CPoS) is a significant milestone in the journal's history, offering us the opportunity to reflect on its development into a key platform for population research, major achievements, and future aspirations. Besides a retrospective, we present a forward-looking perspective, outlining our vision for the journal's trajectory in an ever-changing scientific landscape. Furthermore, we offer insights fro…
Cohérence des données sur les causes de décès à l'échelle infranationale: Les exemples de la Russie, de l'Allemagne, des États-Unis et de la France
Les pratiques de certification et de codage des causes initiales de décès ne sont pas toutes les mêmes, ce qui peut nuire à la pertinence et la fiabilité des statistiques de mortalité par cause. La cohérence de ces données au sein d'un même pays peut être considérée comme un critère de qualité. Cet article évalue la cohérence à l'échelle infranationale des statistiques sur les causes de décès en Russie, en Allemagne, aux États-Unis et en France. …
The Fateful Cohorts
Rectangularization of the survival curve reconsidered: The maximum inner rectangle approach
Rectangularization of the survival curve-a key analytical framework in mortality research-relies on assumptions that have become partially obsolete in high-income countries due to mortality reductions among the oldest old. We propose refining the concept to adjust for recent and potential future mortality changes. Our framework, the 'maximum inner rectangle approach' (MIRA) considers two types of rectangularization. Outer rectangularization captu…
Gompertz, Makeham, and Siler models explain Taylor's law in human mortality data
Taylorâ s law (TL) states a linear relationship on logarithmic scales between the variance and the mean of a nonnegative quantity. TL has been observed in spatiotemporal contexts for the population density of hundreds of species including humans. TL also de
Lifespan Disparity as an Additional Indicator for Evaluating Mortality Forecasts
Evaluating the predictive ability of mortality forecasts is important yet difficult. Death rates and mean lifespan are basic life table functions typically used to analyze to what extent the forecasts deviate from their realized values. Although these parameters are useful for specifying precisely how mortality has been forecasted, they cannot be used to assess whether the underlying mortality developments are plausible. We therefore propose that…
Impact of Economic Conditions and Crises on Mortality and its Predictability
To investigate how economic conditions and crises affect mortality and its predictability in industrialized countries, we review the related literature, and we forecast mortality developments in Spain, Hungary, and Russia-three countries which have recently undergone major transformation processes following the introduction of radical economic and political reforms. The results of our retrospective mortality forecasts from 1991 to 2009 suggest th…
Taylor's power law in human mortality
Taylor's law (TL) typically describes a linear relationship between the logarithm of the variance and the logarithm of the mean of population densities. It has been verified for many non-human species in ecology, and recently, for Norwayâ s human population
Jacob S. Siegel: The Demography and Epidemiology of Human Health and Aging
Minor gradient in mortality by education at the highest ages: An application of the Extinct-Cohort method
Socioeconomic mortality differentials are known to exist almost universally. Many studies show a trend towards convergence with increasing age. Information about the highest ages is very rare, though
The Old-Age Healthy Dependency Ratio in Europe
The aim of this study is to answer the question of whether improvements in the health of the elderly in European countries could compensate for population ageing on the supply side of the labour market. We propose a state-of-health-specific (additive) decomposition of the old-age dependency ratio into an old-age healthy dependency ratio and an old-age unhealthy dependency ratio in order to participate in a discussion of the significance of change…
Ageing populations: The challenges ahead
Falling Short of Highest Life Expectancy: How Many Americans Might Have Been Alive in the Twentieth Century
Life expectancy at birth in the United States during the twentieth century was lower than in many other highly developed countries. We investigate how this mortality disadvantage in the last 100 years translates into the number of hypothetical lives lost and their sex and age structure. We estimate the hypothetical US population if it had experienced in each decade since 1900 the mortality level of the country with the then highest life expectanc…
Cause-of-Death Contributions to Educational Inequalities in Mortality in Austria between 1981/1982 and 1991/1992: Les contributions des causes de décès aux inégalités de mortalité par niveau d’éducati…
This article uses census records and deaths records to analyze trends in educational inequalities in mortality for Austrian women and men aged 35-64 years between 1981/1982 and 1991/1992. We find an increasing gradient in mortality by education for circulatory diseases and especially ischaemic heart disease. Respiratory diseases and, in addition for women, cancers showed the opposite trend. Using decomposition analysis, we give evidence that in m…
Continued Reductions in Mortality at Advanced Ages
Mortality data for 30 mostly developed countries available in the Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old-Age Mortality (KTDB) are drawn on to assess the pace of decline in death rates at ages 80 years and above. As of 2004 this database recorded 37 million persons at these ages, including 130,000 centenarians (more than double the number in 1990). For men, the probability of surviving from age 80 to age 90 has risen from 12 percent in 1950 to 26 perce…
Seasonal mortality in Denmark: The Role of Sex and Age
Our paper addresses two questions on seasonal mortality: How do women and men differ with respect to seasonal fluctuations in mortality? How does seasonality in death change with age? The analysis is based on a sample of all Danes aged 50 and older on
Seasonality of birth in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Austria
We present an analysis of birth seasonality in nine geographical regions within Austria for two time periods, 1881-1912 and 1947-1959. In the early period, geography, climate, and agricultural patterns were related to birth seasonality. By the latter time period, these factors were no longer related to birth seasonality. We propose a "resilience hypothesis," which suggests two levels of causal influences on birth seasonality. First, underlying th…
Continued Reductions in Mortality at Advanced Ages
Mortality data for 30 mostly developed countries available in the Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old-Age Mortality (KTDB) are drawn on to assess the pace of decline in death rates at ages 80 years and above. As of 2004 this database recorded 37 million persons at these ages, including 130,000 centenarians (more than double the number in 1990). For men, the probability of surviving from age 80 to age 90 has risen from 12 percent in 1950 to 26 perce…
Lifespan Disparity as an Additional Indicator for Evaluating Mortality Forecasts
Evaluating the predictive ability of mortality forecasts is important yet difficult. Death rates and mean lifespan are basic life table functions typically used to analyze to what extent the forecasts deviate from their realized values. Although these parameters are useful for specifying precisely how mortality has been forecasted, they cannot be used to assess whether the underlying mortality developments are plausible. We therefore propose that…
The Old-Age Healthy Dependency Ratio in Europe
The aim of this study is to answer the question of whether improvements in the health of the elderly in European countries could compensate for population ageing on the supply side of the labour market. We propose a state-of-health-specific (additive) decomposition of the old-age dependency ratio into an old-age healthy dependency ratio and an old-age unhealthy dependency ratio in order to participate in a discussion of the significance of change…
Rectangularization of the survival curve reconsidered: The maximum inner rectangle approach
Rectangularization of the survival curve-a key analytical framework in mortality research-relies on assumptions that have become partially obsolete in high-income countries due to mortality reductions among the oldest old. We propose refining the concept to adjust for recent and potential future mortality changes. Our framework, the 'maximum inner rectangle approach' (MIRA) considers two types of rectangularization. Outer rectangularization captu…
Seasonal mortality in Denmark: The Role of Sex and Age
Our paper addresses two questions on seasonal mortality: How do women and men differ with respect to seasonal fluctuations in mortality? How does seasonality in death change with age? The analysis is based on a sample of all Danes aged 50 and older on
Cause-of-Death Contributions to Educational Inequalities in Mortality in Austria between 1981/1982 and 1991/1992: Les contributions des causes de décès aux inégalités de mortalité par niveau d’éducati…
This article uses census records and deaths records to analyze trends in educational inequalities in mortality for Austrian women and men aged 35-64 years between 1981/1982 and 1991/1992. We find an increasing gradient in mortality by education for circulatory diseases and especially ischaemic heart disease. Respiratory diseases and, in addition for women, cancers showed the opposite trend. Using decomposition analysis, we give evidence that in m…
Gompertz, Makeham, and Siler models explain Taylor's law in human mortality data
Taylorâ s law (TL) states a linear relationship on logarithmic scales between the variance and the mean of a nonnegative quantity. TL has been observed in spatiotemporal contexts for the population density of hundreds of species including humans. TL also de
Taylor's power law in human mortality
Taylor's law (TL) typically describes a linear relationship between the logarithm of the variance and the logarithm of the mean of population densities. It has been verified for many non-human species in ecology, and recently, for Norwayâ s human population
Cohérence des données sur les causes de décès à l'échelle infranationale: Les exemples de la Russie, de l'Allemagne, des États-Unis et de la France
Les pratiques de certification et de codage des causes initiales de décès ne sont pas toutes les mêmes, ce qui peut nuire à la pertinence et la fiabilité des statistiques de mortalité par cause. La cohérence de ces données au sein d'un même pays peut être considérée comme un critère de qualité. Cet article évalue la cohérence à l'échelle infranationale des statistiques sur les causes de décès en Russie, en Allemagne, aux États-Unis et en France. …
Impact of Economic Conditions and Crises on Mortality and its Predictability
To investigate how economic conditions and crises affect mortality and its predictability in industrialized countries, we review the related literature, and we forecast mortality developments in Spain, Hungary, and Russia-three countries which have recently undergone major transformation processes following the introduction of radical economic and political reforms. The results of our retrospective mortality forecasts from 1991 to 2009 suggest th…
Falling Short of Highest Life Expectancy: How Many Americans Might Have Been Alive in the Twentieth Century
Life expectancy at birth in the United States during the twentieth century was lower than in many other highly developed countries. We investigate how this mortality disadvantage in the last 100 years translates into the number of hypothetical lives lost and their sex and age structure. We estimate the hypothetical US population if it had experienced in each decade since 1900 the mortality level of the country with the then highest life expectanc…
Seasonality of birth in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Austria
We present an analysis of birth seasonality in nine geographical regions within Austria for two time periods, 1881-1912 and 1947-1959. In the early period, geography, climate, and agricultural patterns were related to birth seasonality. By the latter time period, these factors were no longer related to birth seasonality. We propose a "resilience hypothesis," which suggests two levels of causal influences on birth seasonality. First, underlying th…
Seasonality of birth in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Austria
We present an analysis of birth seasonality in nine geographical regions within Austria for two time periods, 1881-1912 and 1947-1959. In the early period, geography, climate, and agricultural patterns were related to birth seasonality. By the latter time period, these factors were no longer related to birth seasonality. We propose a "resilience hypothesis," which suggests two levels of causal influences on birth seasonality. First, underlying th…
Seasonal mortality in Denmark: The Role of Sex and Age
Our paper addresses two questions on seasonal mortality: How do women and men differ with respect to seasonal fluctuations in mortality? How does seasonality in death change with age? The analysis is based on a sample of all Danes aged 50 and older on
Cause-of-Death Contributions to Educational Inequalities in Mortality in Austria between 1981/1982 and 1991/1992: Les contributions des causes de décès aux inégalités de mortalité par niveau d’éducati…
This article uses census records and deaths records to analyze trends in educational inequalities in mortality for Austrian women and men aged 35-64 years between 1981/1982 and 1991/1992. We find an increasing gradient in mortality by education for circulatory diseases and especially ischaemic heart disease. Respiratory diseases and, in addition for women, cancers showed the opposite trend. Using decomposition analysis, we give evidence that in m…
Continued Reductions in Mortality at Advanced Ages
Mortality data for 30 mostly developed countries available in the Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old-Age Mortality (KTDB) are drawn on to assess the pace of decline in death rates at ages 80 years and above. As of 2004 this database recorded 37 million persons at these ages, including 130,000 centenarians (more than double the number in 1990). For men, the probability of surviving from age 80 to age 90 has risen from 12 percent in 1950 to 26 perce…
Ageing populations: The challenges ahead
Falling Short of Highest Life Expectancy: How Many Americans Might Have Been Alive in the Twentieth Century
Life expectancy at birth in the United States during the twentieth century was lower than in many other highly developed countries. We investigate how this mortality disadvantage in the last 100 years translates into the number of hypothetical lives lost and their sex and age structure. We estimate the hypothetical US population if it had experienced in each decade since 1900 the mortality level of the country with the then highest life expectanc…
The Old-Age Healthy Dependency Ratio in Europe
The aim of this study is to answer the question of whether improvements in the health of the elderly in European countries could compensate for population ageing on the supply side of the labour market. We propose a state-of-health-specific (additive) decomposition of the old-age dependency ratio into an old-age healthy dependency ratio and an old-age unhealthy dependency ratio in order to participate in a discussion of the significance of change…
Jacob S. Siegel: The Demography and Epidemiology of Human Health and Aging
Minor gradient in mortality by education at the highest ages: An application of the Extinct-Cohort method
Socioeconomic mortality differentials are known to exist almost universally. Many studies show a trend towards convergence with increasing age. Information about the highest ages is very rare, though
Impact of Economic Conditions and Crises on Mortality and its Predictability
To investigate how economic conditions and crises affect mortality and its predictability in industrialized countries, we review the related literature, and we forecast mortality developments in Spain, Hungary, and Russia-three countries which have recently undergone major transformation processes following the introduction of radical economic and political reforms. The results of our retrospective mortality forecasts from 1991 to 2009 suggest th…
Taylor's power law in human mortality
Taylor's law (TL) typically describes a linear relationship between the logarithm of the variance and the logarithm of the mean of population densities. It has been verified for many non-human species in ecology, and recently, for Norwayâ s human population
Lifespan Disparity as an Additional Indicator for Evaluating Mortality Forecasts
Evaluating the predictive ability of mortality forecasts is important yet difficult. Death rates and mean lifespan are basic life table functions typically used to analyze to what extent the forecasts deviate from their realized values. Although these parameters are useful for specifying precisely how mortality has been forecasted, they cannot be used to assess whether the underlying mortality developments are plausible. We therefore propose that…
The Fateful Cohorts
Rectangularization of the survival curve reconsidered: The maximum inner rectangle approach
Rectangularization of the survival curve-a key analytical framework in mortality research-relies on assumptions that have become partially obsolete in high-income countries due to mortality reductions among the oldest old. We propose refining the concept to adjust for recent and potential future mortality changes. Our framework, the 'maximum inner rectangle approach' (MIRA) considers two types of rectangularization. Outer rectangularization captu…
Gompertz, Makeham, and Siler models explain Taylor's law in human mortality data
Taylorâ s law (TL) states a linear relationship on logarithmic scales between the variance and the mean of a nonnegative quantity. TL has been observed in spatiotemporal contexts for the population density of hundreds of species including humans. TL also de
Cohérence des données sur les causes de décès à l'échelle infranationale: Les exemples de la Russie, de l'Allemagne, des États-Unis et de la France
Les pratiques de certification et de codage des causes initiales de décès ne sont pas toutes les mêmes, ce qui peut nuire à la pertinence et la fiabilité des statistiques de mortalité par cause. La cohérence de ces données au sein d'un même pays peut être considérée comme un critère de qualité. Cet article évalue la cohérence à l'échelle infranationale des statistiques sur les causes de décès en Russie, en Allemagne, aux États-Unis et en France. …
Ageing populations: New challenges in longevity
The deceleration in life expectancy gains, particularly among the oldest populations, raises important questions about future trends in longevity. As physical and cognitive health change in older ages healthcare systems will face new and diverse challenges. Understanding the role of ageing and time-to-death in shaping healthcare costs will be critical for anticipating future needs in high-income countries
On the momentum of pseudostable populations
BACKGROUND: Keyfitz introduced in 1971 the “population momentum” – that is, the amount of further population growth (decline) if an instantaneous reduction (increase) of fertility to the replacement level occurred in a stable population. OBJECTIVE: We wanted to find analytical results for the momentum of pseudostable populations – that is, populations that relax the strict assumptions of the stable population model and allow fertility reductions …
Comparative Population Studies at Fifty: Views on the Past, Present, and Future
The 50th volume of Comparative Population Studies (CPoS) is a significant milestone in the journal's history, offering us the opportunity to reflect on its development into a key platform for population research, major achievements, and future aspirations. Besides a retrospective, we present a forward-looking perspective, outlining our vision for the journal's trajectory in an ever-changing scientific landscape. Furthermore, we offer insights fro…
For Whom Does Place Matter? Regional Variation in the SES-Mortality Gradient Among Retired Men in Germany
There is mounting evidence in Germany of significant mortality inequalities associated with socioeconomic status (SES). This issue holds considerable relevance for social policy debates. However, there is a paucity of research regarding how SES-mortality inequalities differ across German regions and between urban and rural areas. This is surprising, given that existing studies suggest that SES-mortality disparities can vary systematically based o…
Visualising Age-Specific Fertility Patterns in the Former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and in East Germany, 1956-2024
In this contribution, the authors visualise how fertility dynamics have changed in East Germany over a period of 69 years, covering much of the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the societal transformation following reunification and the more recent past. The Lexis surface plot provides an intuitive understanding of the underlying developments that have contributed to the change in the age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs). It rev…
Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management (16 works) · Demography (14 works) · Global Health Care Issues (14 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (14 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Population (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Life expectancy (6 works)