Subscribe to our "Population in Perspective" Substack Here!
Join us for the upcoming seminar with Dr Héctor Pifarré i Arolas, Assistant Professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is also an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology, the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, and European Studies at UW–Madison.
Tuesday 24 November 2026 | 2.00–3.30 pm | Butler Room, Nuffield College
About the seminar
Period-based life table methods remain the main approach to assessing loss of life from mortality crises, despite their known limitations. In this research, Dr Pifarré i Arolas and his co-authors reassess 367 crises drawn from 236 countries and territories over the last 270 years from a cohort perspective, using recently developed approaches that apply crisis mortality only at the ages actually exposed.
Their findings suggest that period measures can overstate losses by one to nearly two orders of magnitude. They also identify substantial differences in how mortality crises are ranked, with some moving from among the deadliest to the middle of the distribution.
These findings do not necessarily mean that mortality crises matter less than previously thought. Rather, they point to the importance of looking beyond their magnitude and considering how deaths from mortality crises can be particularly disruptive when concentrated in time, age and place.
About the speaker
Dr Héctor Pifarré i Arolas studies the determinants and measurement of fertility and mortality. A central theme of his recent work is the distinction between period and cohort perspectives. Demographic trends are often summarized with period measures such as life expectancy, which can mask important differences across birth cohorts.
Much of his current work explores how cohort perspectives change our understanding of mortality trends, the determinants of fertility, and demographic forecasting. His work has appeared in journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Population Economics, and Demography.
He also edits NEP-DEM, a weekly newsletter of new working papers in demographic economics featured in IDEAS.