Flexible parametric methods for calculating life expectancy in small populations

BACKGROUND: Life expectancy is a simple measure of assessing health differences between two or more populations but current life expectancy calculations are not reliable for small populations. A potential solution to this is to borrow strength from larger populations from the same source, but this has not formally been investigated. METHODS: Using data on 451,222 individuals from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink on the presence/absence of intellectual disability and type 2 diabetes mellitus, we compared stratified and combined flexible parametric models, and Chiang’s methods, for calculating life expectancy. Confidence intervals were calculated using the Delta method, Chiang’s adjusted life table approach and bootstrapping. RESULTS: The flexible parametric models allowed calculation of life expectancy by exact age and beyond traditional life expectancy age thresholds. The combined model that fit age interaction effects as a spline term provided less bias and greater statistical precision for small covariate subgroups by borrowing strength from the larger subgroups. However, careful consideration of the distribution of events in the smallest group was needed. CONCLUSIONS: Life expectancy is a simple measure to compare health differences between populations. The use of combined flexible parametric methods to calculate life expectancy in small samples has shown promising results by allowing life expectancy to be modelled by exact age, greater statistical precision, less bias and prediction of different covariate patterns without stratification. We recommend further investigation of their application for both policymakers and researchers. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12963-023-00313-x.