Timing and speed of the mortality transition in European countries

This paper investigates the variability of life span at retirement age in 28 developed and transition countries. We analyze trends in cohort mortality for selected OECD countries, Russia and Taiwan and predict life expectancy and inequality at age 60. We find that the average and the standard deviation of (remaining) life span are increasing in all countries but Russia. Average life span tends to increase more rapidly than the standard deviation, resulting in lower levels of relative inequality. We forecast that the life span distribution will continue to shift out and widen. Across birth cohorts 1930-1960, we predict increasing relative inequality in Russia and among Japanese women. In other countries, and among Japanese men, we predict lower relative inequality. The declines are expected to be particularly pronounced among men and in Western Europe. We discuss the findings in the context of the debate on limits to longevity and public pension reform.

We examine the mortality transition by placing country-specific trajectories on a landscape defined by demographic, social, and economic factors. We identify dimensions of a demographic ‘space’ that different countries have occupied through time. A population’s space is defined by life expectancy, GRR, latitude, and Gross Domestic Product per capita. We also quantify changes in the selection landscape by examining associations between mortality and Fisher’s reproductive value, Crow’s opportunity for selection, and Ryder’s demographic metabolism (the sum of the intrinsic birth and death rates). The large amounts of data (9 countries spanning 315 to 564 years) and the features of our demographic landscapes identify patterns among economic, selective, and historical factors that cannot typically be revealed in smaller scale analyses. For example, mortality reduction leads to changes in the relative variation of demographic traits, altering the potential for selection. We find that the potential for selection acting on longevity decreases dramatically as probability of survival to adulthood increases and that fertility selection is greatest when fertility is lowest. Likewise, countries often follow very different trajectories across the landscapes as they go through the mortality transition.

A substantial number of epidemiological studies have discussed changes in mortality risk by life history exposures, and yet few have investigated the rate of aging. The rate of aging has been widely accepted as age-related mortality and the decline in physiological function. Hence, it has been assumed that smokers experience not only a higher mortality risk but also a higher rate of aging than never smokers. In this study, we address whether this assumption can be casually accepted by investigating the rate of aging in current and never smokers. Here, using a frailty-based Gompertz survival framework, we illustrate the force of mortality by smoking status and the rate of aging as the relative derivative in mortality with respect to increasing age. As expected, smokers experience a higher risk for mortality than never smokers. Interestingly, their relative risk converged with increasing age, a phenomenon due to unobserved heterogeneity. In this article, we report for the first time that long-term tobacco smokers do not experience a higher rate of aging than non-smokers, and that smokers do experience a 5-year decrement in life expectancy.