Limited data, endless opportunities

Data for Curacao is only available from 2006 onwards. One could therefore argue that insufficient data is available to perform a decent mortality study.

However, even larger countries suffer from the issue of changing data over time: life style and habits change (smoking used to be more popular in the past), income equality and the level of education fluctuate, and also due to emigration the proportion of local and nonlocal people is not constant. More data therefore doesn’t always imply better predictions in the dynamic world of today.

Despite limited Caribbean data, the Worldbank dataset shows a remarkable overall trend of increasing life expectancy for the Caribbean region. We agree with Deming’s quote that “without data you’re just another person with an opinion” and therefore believe that despite the challenges of limited data, it is far more preferable to draw conclusions on the available data, then to either use gut feeling, or following pricing behavior of competitors. However, the techniques used for mortality modelling, will differ in locations with limited data, and we will show which techniques are available for mortality modelling for smaller countries.

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