论文部分内容阅读
Markov Aging, Physiological Age and Phase-Type Law of Mortality M. Govorun, B. L. Jones, X. Liu, D. A. Stanford Lin and Liu (2007) proposed a finite-state Markov process with one absorbing state to model human mortality. A health index called physiological age is introduced and modeled by the Markov process. Under this model the time of death follows a phase-type distribution. In this paper, we show how an extended phase-type aging model can be used to quantify the impact of health observations on probabilities of the physiological age of an individual. We illustrate our model using health cost data, and we investigate the impact of an observed health cost on the distribution of an individuals physiological age. The resulting distributions of physiological age and future life expectancies are investigated. Their behaviours conform with our intuition and confirm the value of this approach to using past health information in modelling the future lifetime and future health of an individual. Matrix analytic tools are extensively used in this application.