PONE-D-23-11934Convergence and Divergence in Mortality: A Global Study From 1990 to 2030PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This study analysed the convergence and divergences in mortality between 1990 and 2030 by analysing multiple mortality indicators at different ages. The authors used innovative clustering methods to measure global convergence and divergence in mortality. The authors provided a good background for this study and explained each indicator used to analyse past or future convergence and divergence. This paper will be a good contribution to the literature on convergence or divergence in health and mortality. This paper fits well for PLOS ONE readers. There are comments to improve its clarity for the readers.

1. The B Annex 2 explains the estimation of the mortality indicators; however, the explanation for some variables used in the equations needs to be included. The authors advised giving details of each component in the equation.

2. The authors mentioned that the cluster methods allow the splitting of the mortality indicator into different groups so that countries within each cluster are quite similar to each other. In Table 4, Rwanda and Qatar are the two countries that represent the FC5-1990 cluster. These two countries differed in mortality levels and exhibited large differences in females' life expectancy during 1990. The authors suggested talking about it in the results.

3. The authors provided the cluster characteristics in Tables 4, 5, and 6. The authors advised adding the number of countries to each cluster.

4. The discussion sections of the paper mainly discuss the results; the authors advised adding more about whether there is any similarity in epidemiological and demographic transitions across the countries within cluster groups.

Reviewer #2: This article aims to update the literature on "convergence or

divergence in mortality" with, in its abstract, references to Wilson

2001 and Mesle 2004, but it is not.

Both already published articles consider the evolution since

a much older and longer period, namely for developed countries the end of the

18th century and they are not proposing mortality projections.

Moreover, they essentially only use the level of mortality, namely

life expectancy, and are not interested at other functions which can be derived from a life table.

But, the previous authors are also looking at other sources of data which

is not the case for the proposed article. Meslé et al. will look for

data by major cause of death to explain the divergence, for example of

Eastern countries.

The proposed article looks at only one source, not even discussing the

quality of the data neither on how they are constructed.

The article is a good statistical exercise, using the latest published

methods in demographic and statistical R packages but on a data set

which has been built by the UN for a less ambitious aim.

It seems to us that the authors are seeking to compensate the lack of

knowledge on demographic data sources by adding all the "modern"

indicators derived from a unique abridged life table.

Let us yet describe their work which could be of interest if it was

limited to countries where mortality rates are not already a result of

a model.

...

(see long attachment)

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Nicolas Brouard

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: myrefer.pdf

Convergence and Divergence in Mortality: A Global Study From 1990 to 2030

PONE-D-23-11934R1

Dear Dr. David Atance,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements and subject to incorporate the reviewer's new comments.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Jayanta Kumar Bora,PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: As requested in my firt referee, the authors did an excellent job in adding a principal component analysis and mixing its results with the cluster analysis.

And as expected, the different clusters are completely distinct; this beautiful representation is the most interesting part of the article for a demographer. The authors could have graduated the first component in terms of life expectancy (e0) on their graphs, in order to allow readers to appreciate not only the different levels 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years for a specific period (like 1990) but also to judge improvements in terms of life expectancy in 2010 and 2030. A graduation of the life expectancy at 65 for developed countries could also be of interest to a reader. Of course, these scales are not linear.

A plot of the second component and the third component (i.e. independent of the overall mortality level), would help readers understand the correlation matrix analysis.

You could limit yourself to representing the 9 variables on the correlation circle and overlay only a few typical countries from each cluster. These new graphs, tables and this paragraph on correlations are particularly useful because they allow non-demographers to understand the mortality transition: when infant and child mortality are high, e(65) and most other variables are useless; but, after the transition, they begin to play a role. The authors added the necessary remarks on the quality of the UN sources, even if they did not mention the absence of vital statistics (the only source that can provide independent data by age) in too many countries.

I also appreciate the efforts to make tables and graphs more readable.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Nicolas Brouard, French Institute for Population Studies (INED, Paris)

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