Mortality postponement and compression at older ages in human cohorts

A key but unresolved issue in the study of human mortality at older ages is whether mortality is being compressed (which implies that we may be approaching a maximum limit to the length of life) or postponed (which would imply that we are not). We analyze historical and current population mortality...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPloS one Vol. 18; no. 3; p. e0281752
Main Authors McCarthy, David, Wang, Po-Lin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 29.03.2023
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Age
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Bayes Theorem
Bayesian analysis
Biology and Life Sciences
Centenarians
Cohort analysis
Compression
Computer and Information Sciences
Confidence intervals
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Estimates
Evaluation
Female
Health aspects
Humans
Life expectancy
Life span
Longevity
Medicine and Health Sciences
Middle Aged
Mortality
Older people
Oldest old people
Parturition
People and Places
Pregnancy
Research and Analysis Methods
Sweden
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Summary:A key but unresolved issue in the study of human mortality at older ages is whether mortality is being compressed (which implies that we may be approaching a maximum limit to the length of life) or postponed (which would imply that we are not). We analyze historical and current population mortality data between ages 50 and 100 by birth cohort in 19 currently-industrialized countries, using a Bayesian technique to surmount cohort censoring caused by survival, to show that while the dominant historical pattern has been one of mortality compression, there have been occasional episodes of mortality postponement. The pattern of postponement and compression across different birth cohorts explain why longevity records have been slow to increase in recent years: we find that cohorts born between around 1900 and 1950 are experiencing historically unprecedented mortality postponement, but are still too young to break longevity records. As these cohorts attain advanced ages in coming decades, longevity records may therefore increase significantly. Our results confirm prior work suggesting that if there is a maximum limit to the human lifespan, we are not yet approaching it.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0281752