The plateau of human mortality: Demography of longevity pioneers

Theories about biological limits to life span and evolutionary shaping of human longevity depend on facts about mortality at extreme ages, but these facts have remained a matter of debate. Do hazard curves typically level out into high plateaus eventually, as seen in other species, or do exponential...

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Published inScience (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 360; no. 6396; pp. 1459 - 1461
Main Authors Barbi, Elisabetta, Lagona, Francesco, Marsili, Marco, Vaupel, James W, Wachter, Kenneth W
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States The American Association for the Advancement of Science 29.06.2018
Subjects
Age
Aged, 80 and over
Attrition (Research Studies)
Biological evolution
Deceleration
Demography
Female
Hazards
Humans
Italy - epidemiology
Life span
Longevity
Male
Mortality
Mortality - trends
Plateaus
Proportional Hazards Models
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Summary:Theories about biological limits to life span and evolutionary shaping of human longevity depend on facts about mortality at extreme ages, but these facts have remained a matter of debate. Do hazard curves typically level out into high plateaus eventually, as seen in other species, or do exponential increases persist? In this study, we estimated hazard rates from data on all inhabitants of Italy aged 105 and older between 2009 and 2015 (born 1896-1910), a total of 3836 documented cases. We observed level hazard curves, which were essentially constant beyond age 105. Our estimates are free from artifacts of aggregation that limited earlier studies and provide the best evidence to date for the existence of extreme-age mortality plateaus in humans.
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ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aat3119