A universal pattern of mortality decline in the g7 countries

ABSTRACT Human lifespan has increased enormously this century1,2,3. But we remain uncertain about the forces that reduce mortality, and about the cost implications of ageing populations4,5

and their associated social burden. The poor understanding of the factors driving mortality decline2,6,7, and the difficulty of forecasting mortality8,9,10,11 are due in part to the

pronounced irregularity of annual to decadal mortality change7,12. 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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support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS IMPLAUSIBILITY OF RADICAL LIFE EXTENSION IN HUMANS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Article Open access 07 October 2024 THE LIFESPAN DISPARITY

DATASET: AN OPEN REPOSITORY ON INEQUALITY AND POLARIZATION IN LENGTH OF LIFE (1950–2021) Article Open access 21 June 2024 AGING IN THE USA: SIMILARITIES AND DISPARITIES ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

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thank M. Anderson, R. Lee and K. Wachter for comments. This work was supported by the US National Institute of Aging and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (S.T.). AUTHOR INFORMATION

AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Mountain View Research, 2251 Grant Road,, Los Altos, 94204, California, USA Shripad Tuljapurkar, Nan Li & Carl Boe Authors * Shripad Tuljapurkar View author

publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Nan Li View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Carl Boe View author

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THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Tuljapurkar, S., Li, N. & Boe, C. A universal pattern of mortality decline in the G7 countries. _Nature_ 405, 789–792 (2000).

https://doi.org/10.1038/35015561 Download citation * Received: 11 January 2000 * Accepted: 16 March 2000 * Issue Date: 15 June 2000 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35015561 SHARE THIS ARTICLE

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