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| 1. | First results of this research were presented at the 1998 Canadian Population Society Annual Meeting [26]; more detailed results are available in [25]. |
| 2. | The hypothesis about equal distribution of deaths between the younger and the older cohort is a simplification. In fact, because of rapidly declining numbers of persons with age, combined with a slow increase in the death rate, we would expect more deaths in the younger cohort (lower triangle of the Lexis diagram). However, there is a compensating effect because the upper triangle (older cohort) contains more winter months, and thus deaths at older ages tend to be distributed almost equally between the two cohorts. |
| 3. | The exceptional case of Jeanne Calment, a French woman who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 5 months is not mentioned in this paper. Other validated cases of exceptional longevity are also omitted: Marie Louise Meilleur, a French Canadian woman who died in 1998 at age 117 and Christian Mortensen, an American man who died in 1998 at age 115. |
| 4. | According to the census figures, Canada had 3685 centenarians in 1991: 135 centenarians per million of the total population. |
| 5. | To reduce annual fluctuations, death rates were smoothed twice through a moving average, over three and five years, between 1955-59 and 1985-1989. To cancel the effect of structural variations in calculating the rates, Sweden’s population distribution by five-year age groups was used for all countries (Sweden: 80-84 years: 0,6360; 85-89 years: 0,2743; 90-94 years: 0,0774 and 95-99 years: 0,0123). Given that fewer men die over the age of 80 years, rates for the total population are composed of two-thirds of female rates and one-third of male rates. |
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