A universal pattern of mortality decline in the G7 countries
Human lifespan has increased enormously this century. But we remain uncertain about the forces that reduce mortality, and about the cost implications of ageing populations and their associated social burden. The poor understanding of the factors driving mortality decline, and the difficulty of forec...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Nature (London) 2000-06, Vol.405 (6788), p.789-792 |
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Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | Human lifespan has increased enormously this century.
But we remain uncertain about the forces that reduce mortality, and about
the cost implications of ageing populations and their associated
social burden. The poor understanding of the factors driving mortality decline, and the difficulty of forecasting mortality
are due in part to the pronounced irregularity of annual to decadal mortality
change. Here we examine mortality over five decades in
the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US). In every
country over this period, mortality at each age has declined exponentially
at a roughly constant rate. This trend places a constraint on any theory of
society-driven mortality decline, and provides a basis for stochastic mortality
forecasting. We find that median forecasts of life expectancy are substantially
larger than in existing official forecasts. In terms of the costs of ageing,
we forecast values of the dependency ratio (that is, the ratio of people over
65 to working people) in 2050 that are between 6% (UK) and 40% (Japan) higher
than official forecasts. |
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ISSN: | 0028-0836 1476-4687 |
DOI: | 10.1038/35015561 |