Volume 19 - Article 30 | Pages 1179–1204  

The modal age at death and the shifting mortality hypothesis

By Vladimir Canudas-Romo

Abstract

The modal age at death is used to study the shifting mortality scenario experienced by low mortality countries. The relations of the life table functions at the modal age are analyzed using mortality models. In the models the modal age increases over time, but there is an asymptotic approximation towards a constant number of deaths and standard deviation from the mode. The findings are compared to the changes observed in populations with historical mortality data. During the transition period to a shifting mortality era the population becomes highly heterogeneous and the rate of improvement in mortality is highly sensitive to these changes. By focusing in the modal age at death, a new perspective on the analysis of human longevity is revealed.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Variable-r in sex ratios: Formulas in honor of Jim Vaupel
Volume 49 - Article 26

Comparative evidence of years lived with reproductive-age morbidity in sub-Saharan Africa (2010‒2019)
Volume 49 - Article 6

The role of reductions in old-age mortality in old-age population growth
Volume 44 - Article 44

Expected years ever married
Volume 38 - Article 47

Coherent forecasts of mortality with compositional data analysis
Volume 37 - Article 17

Decomposing changes in life expectancy: Compression versus shifting mortality
Volume 33 - Article 14

The Gompertz force of mortality in terms of the modal age at death
Volume 32 - Article 36

Cause-specific measures of life years lost
Volume 29 - Article 41

The crossover between life expectancies at birth and at age one: The imbalance in the life table
Volume 24 - Article 4

No consistent effects of prenatal or neonatal exposure to Spanish flu on late-life mortality in 24 developed countries
Volume 22 - Article 20

An integrated approach to cause-of-death analysis: cause-deleted life tables and decompositions of life expectancy
Volume 19 - Article 35

Changing mortality and average cohort life expectancy
Volume 13 - Article 5

Age-specific contributions to changes in the period and cohort life expectancy
Volume 13 - Article 3

Decomposing demographic change into direct vs. compositional components
Volume 7 - Article 1

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Mortality shifts and mortality compression in period and cohort life tables
Volume 41 - Article 40    | Keywords: age at death, cohort life expectancy, compression of mortality, distribution of deaths, mean age at death, period life expectancy

Does selection of mortality model make a difference in projecting population ageing?
Volume 34 - Article 2    | Keywords: forecasting ageing, mortality models, population aging, population projections

Decomposing changes in life expectancy: Compression versus shifting mortality
Volume 33 - Article 14    | Keywords: compression of mortality, decomposition, life expectancy, modal age at death, mortality models, shifting mortality

Changes in the age-at-death distribution in four low mortality countries: A nonparametric approach
Volume 25 - Article 19    | Keywords: modal age of death, old-age mortality compression, P-spline smoothing, shifting mortality

Arthur Roger Thatcher's contributions to longevity research: A Reflexion
Volume 22 - Article 18    | Keywords: centenarians, compression of mortality, Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old Age Mortality (KTD), longevity, old age mortality, supercentenarians

Cited References: 40

Download to Citation Manager

Volume
Page
Volume
Article ID