Bayesian mortality forecasting with overdispersion

The ability to produce accurate mortality forecasts, accompanied by a set of representative uncertainty bands, is crucial in the planning of public retirement funds and various life-related businesses. In this paper, we focus on one of the drawbacks of the Poisson Lee–Carter model (Brouhns et al., 2002) that imposes mean–variance equality, restricting mortality variations across individuals. Specifically, we present two models to potentially account for overdispersion. We propose to fit these models within the Bayesian framework for various advantages, but primarily for coherency. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are implemented to carry out parameter estimation. Several comparisons are made with the Bayesian Poisson Lee–Carter model (Czado et al., 2005) to highlight the importance of accounting for overdispersion. We demonstrate that the methodology we developed prevents over-fitting and yields better calibrated prediction intervals for the purpose of mortality projections. Bridge sampling is used to approximate the marginal likelihood of each candidate model to compare the models quantitatively

A Survey of Work-Related Pain Prevalence Among Construction Workers in Hong Kong: A Case-Control Study

Construction workers undertake demanding physical work and face high risk of injuries in poor working environments. This case-control study investigated the extent of their musculoskeletal pain incidence at work. A total of 2021 construction workers in different trades were interviewed on-site in a survey from December 2017 to December 2018. The survey results revealed that the pain prevalence of the subjects in the last 24 h was 10.6 %. The worst and top most common pain spots caused by work were central lower back, left/right shoulders, and knees. Regarding pain management, their most common method was to ignore the pain (21.4%). The average percentage of pain relief after receiving treatment in the 24 h was 37.12%. Besides, significant differences were found between the pain and non-pain groups regarding their employment duration in current job or their average sleep duration in the 24 h. The study showed that those with multiple and bilateral pain sites had pain interference on their living activities

Thomas Mann, La volontà di essere felici

Curatela delle raccolta di racconti di Thomas Mann, "La volontà di essere felici