Dynamics of life expectancy and life span equality

José Manuel Aburto (), Francisco Villavicencio, Ugofilippo Basellini, Søren Kjærgaard and James W. Vaupel ()
Additional contact information
José Manuel Aburto: Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense, Denmark; Lifespan Inequalities Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 18057 Rostock, Germany
Francisco Villavicencio: Department of International Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205
Ugofilippo Basellini: Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense, Denmark; Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 18057 Rostock, Germany; Mortality, Health and Epidemiology Unit, Institut National d’Études Démographiques (INED), 93322 Aubervilliers, France
Søren Kjærgaard: Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense, Denmark; Center for Research in Econometric Analysis of Time Series (CREATES), Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
James W. Vaupel: Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark, 5000 Odense, Denmark; Duke University Population Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708; Emeritus Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 18057 Rostock, Germany

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, vol. 117, issue 10, 5250-5259

Abstract: As people live longer, ages at death are becoming more similar. This dual advance over the last two centuries, a central aim of public health policies, is a major achievement of modern civilization. Some recent exceptions to the joint rise of life expectancy and life span equality, however, make it difficult to determine the underlying causes of this relationship. Here, we develop a unifying framework to study life expectancy and life span equality over time, relying on concepts about the pace and shape of aging. We study the dynamic relationship between life expectancy and life span equality with reliable data from the Human Mortality Database for 49 countries and regions with emphasis on the long time series from Sweden. Our results demonstrate that both changes in life expectancy and life span equality are weighted totals of rates of progress in reducing mortality. This finding holds for three different measures of the variability of life spans. The weights evolve over time and indicate the ages at which reductions in mortality increase life expectancy and life span equality: the more progress at the youngest ages, the tighter the relationship. The link between life expectancy and life span equality is especially strong when life expectancy is less than 70 y. In recent decades, life expectancy and life span equality have occasionally moved in opposite directions due to larger improvements in mortality at older ages or a slowdown in declines in midlife mortality. Saving lives at ages below life expectancy is the key to increasing both life expectancy and life span equality.

Keywords: aging; demography; life span variation; mortality; pace and shape (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.pnas.org/content/117/10/5250.full (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:117:y:2020:p:5250-5259

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by PNAS Product Team ().