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In recent years, the importance of describing mortality at the limits of the life span has led to a number of relevant and controversial studies. Whereas considerable efforts have been devoted to collecting data and estimating models on the oldest-old individuals, the testing of statistical confidence about the conclusions of analyses at extreme ages has been largely neglected. How certain can we be in saying that the risk of dying increases, levels out, or, paradoxically, decreases over age 105? Can we recognize particular mortality age patterns at such high ages? In this paper, it is shown that very little can be confidently asserted about mortality at extreme ages. Instead of analyzing actual data, we perform a series of simulation studies mimicking actual scenarios from controlled mechanisms. Our findings are thus robust with respect to factors such as particular observation schemes, heterogeneity, and data quality issues. Given the sample sizes currently available and the levels of mortality experienced in present populations, we show that before age 110, only a Gompertzian increase of mortality may be detected. Afterwards a plateau will be regularly recognized as the most suitable pattern, regardless of the complexity of the true underlying mortality.

The Gini coefficient of the life table is a concentration index that provides information on lifespan variation. Originally proposed by economists to measure income and wealth inequalities, it has been widely used in population studies to investigate variation in ages at death. We focus on a complementary indicator, Drewnowski's index, which is as a measure of equality. We study its mathematical properties and analyze how changes over time relate to changes in life expectancy. Further, we identify the threshold age below which mortality improvements are translated into decreasing lifespan variation and above which these improvements translate into increasing lifespan inequality. We illustrate our theoretical findings simulating scenarios of mortality improvement in the Gompertz model. Our experiments demonstrate how Drewnowski's index can serve as an indicator of the shape of mortality patterns. These properties, along with our analytical findings, support studying lifespan variation alongside life expectancy trends in multiple species., 28 pages, 5 figures

Many more cases of supercentenarians are observed in the French Départements d’Outre-Mer (DOM) than in metropolitan France. A first possible explanation is that the standard French protocol for validating age does not sufficiently cover DOMs. However, if additional checks can confirm the verity of this phenomenon, forming explanatory hypotheses can be relevant and quite interesting. Thanks to an INED research funding, a special protocol of deep age checking has been established to be applied to the two DOMs where the phenomenon is the most pronounced: Guadeloupe and Martinique. First results not only show that combining several additional checks does not leave much room for further doubting the ages of supercentenarians but they also support some arguments in favor of a possible fundamental explanation: genetic selection due to the extreme severity of mortality inflicted on their slave ancestors.

Drawing cohort profiles and cohort forecasts from grids of age-period data is common practice in demography. In this research note, we: (1) estimate the bias in the cohort TFR and life expectancies calculated from such data, and (2) demonstrate that cohort Lee-Carter forecasts drawn from an age-period grid have implausible prediction intervals, especially when drawn from the upper and lower bounds of the time series parameter. These biases are surprisingly large, even when the cohort profiles are created from single-age, single-year period data. The danger is that we overinterpret deviations from expected trends, that in actual fact were induced by our own data manipulation.

In 2015, the French law on the adaptation of society to ageing signaled the country’s political will to prepare comprehensively for the consequences of population ageing. It formalized the findings of international research and public debates that have long emphasized its scope and multiple implications. This article reviews these issues by drawing on the experience of 40 high-longevity countries. In 2020, there were 4 times as many people aged 65 and older as there were in 1950; in Japan, the 'oldest' country, their proportion has jumped from 5% to 28%, and life expectancy has nearly doubled. The first part of this article lays out the definitions and measures of population ageing, then describes the diversity of the dynamics of these high-longevity countries. The second part examines the multidimensional and intertwined issues at stake, regarding health (What is the limit to longevity? How is life expectancy in good health changing?), demography (How are family and partnership configurations changing?), and the economy via the problematics of social protection models (retirement, assisted living, intergenerational transfers).; En 2015, la loi d’adaptation de la société au vieillissement marquait en France la volonté politique d’anticiper de manière globale les conséquences du vieillissement démographique. Elle formalisait les constats des recherches et débats publics internationaux qui, depuis longtemps, en soulignent l’ampleur et les multiples implications. Cette chronique fait le point sur ces questions en s’appuyant sur l’expérience de 40 pays caractérisés par une longévité élevée. En 2020, les personnes de 65 ans et plus y sont quatre fois plus nombreuses qu’en 1950 ; au Japon, pays le plus « vieux », leur proportion a bondi de 5 % à 28 % et leur espérance de vie a presque doublé. Une première partie présente les définitions et les mesures du vieillissement démographique, puis la diversité des dynamiques de ces 40 pays. La seconde partie décrit les enjeux multidimensionnels et imbriqués du phénomène en termes sanitaires (quelle limite à la longévité ? quelle évolution de l’espérance de vie en bonne santé ?), sociodémographiques (comment se modifient les configurations conjugales, familiales ?) et économiques, via la problématique des modèles de protection sociale (retraite, aide à l’autonomie, transferts intergénérationnels).

En 2015, la loi d’adaptation de la societe au vieillissement marquait en France la volonte politique d’anticiper de maniere globale les consequences du vieillissement demographique. Elle formalisait les constats des recherches et debats publics internationaux qui, depuis longtemps, en soulignent l’ampleur et les multiples implications. Cette chronique fait le point sur ces questions en s’appuyant sur l’experience de 40 pays caracterises par une longevite elevee. En 2020, les personnes de 65 ans et plus y sont quatre fois plus nombreuses qu’en 1950 ; au Japon, pays le plus « vieux », leur proportion a bondi de 5 % a 28 % et leur esperance de vie a presque double. Une premiere partie presente les definitions et les mesures du vieillissement demographique, puis la diversite des dynamiques de ces 40 pays. La seconde partie decrit les enjeux multidimensionnels et imbriques du phenomene en termes sanitaires (quelle limite a la longevite ? quelle evolution de l’esperance de vie en bonne sante ?), sociodemographiques (comment se modifient les configurations conjugales, familiales ?) et economiques, via la problematique des modeles de protection sociale (retraite, aide a l’autonomie, transferts intergenerationnels).

International audience; Empirical research on human mortality and extreme longevity suggests that the risk of death among the oldest-old ceases to increase and levels off at age 110. The universality of this finding remains in dispute because of two main reasons: i) high uncertainty around statistical estimates generated from scarce data, and ii) the lack of country-specific comparisons. In this article, we estimate age patterns of mortality above age 105 using data from the International Database on Longevity, an exceptionally large and recently updated database comprising more than 13,000 validated records of long-lived individuals from eight populations. We show that, in all of them, similar mortality trajectories arise, suggesting that the risk of dying levels off after age 105. As more high-quality data become available, there is more evidence in support of a levelling-off of the risk of dying as a regularity of longevous populations.

Significance Why life expectancy and life span equality have increased together is a question of scientific interest. Both measures are calculated for a calendar year and might not describe a cohort’s actual life course. Nonetheless, life expectancy provides a useful measure of average life spans, and life span equality gives insights into uncertainty about age at death. We show how patterns of change in life expectancy and life span equality are described by trajectories of mortality improvements over age and time. The strength of the relationship between life expectancy and life span equality is not coincidental but rather a result of progress in saving lives at specific ages: the more lives saved at the youngest ages, the stronger the relationship is., 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.

Background Healthy life years have superseded life expectancy (LE) as the most important indicator for population health. The most common approach to separate the total number of life years into those spent in good and poor health is the Sullivan method which incorporates the health dimension to the classic period life table, thus transforming the LE indicator into the health expectancy (HE) indicator. However, life years derived from a period life table and health prevalence derived from survey data are based on different conceptual frameworks. Method We modify the Sullivan method by combining the health prevalence data with the conceptually better fitting cross-sectional average length of life (CAL). We refer to this alternative HE indicator as the “cross-sectional average length of healthy life” (HCAL). We compare results from this alternative indicator with the conventional Sullivan approach for nine European countries. The analyses are based on EU-SILC data in three empirical applications, including the absolute and relative level of healthy life years, changes between 2008 and 2014, and the extent of the gender gap. Results HCAL and conventional HE differ in each of these empirical applications. In general, HCAL provides larger gains in healthy life years in recent years, but at the same time greater declines in the proportion of healthy life years. Regarding the gender gap, HCAL provides a more favourable picture for women compared to conventional HE. Nonetheless, the extent of these differences between the indicators is only of minor extent. Conclusions Albeit the differences between HE and HCAL are small, we found some empirical examples in which the two indicators led to different conclusions. It is important to note, however, that the measurement of health and the data quality are much more important for the healthy life years indicator than the choice of the variant of the Sullivan method. Nonetheless, we suggest to use HCAL in addition to HE whenever possible because it widens the spectrum of empirical analyses and serves for verification of results based on the highly sensitive HE indicator.

Les transitions démographiques en cours constituent des défis sociaux, économiques et médicaux majeurs. La longévité et le vieillissement étant des phénomènes pluriels par nature, ils constituent un champ de recherche particulièrement riche et investi par les sciences humaines et sociales (SHS). Le Groupement d’intérêt scientifique ILVV a pour objectif de soutenir l’articulation des approches et des méthodes autour des thématiques clés de façon à faire évoluer collectivement les savoirs en les ancrant au coeur des débats publics.

Il ne s'agit pas ici de tenter une fois de plus d'estimer une quelconque mortalité biologique limite au-delà de laquelle aucun être humain ne pourrait vivre mais, de façon beaucoup plus modeste et pragmatique, de mesurer ce que pourrait être l'espérance de vie à la naissance d'une population qui jouirait des taux de mortalité par âge et par cause de décès les plus faibles observés de par le monde à un moment donné. En répétant le même calcul pour différentes époques, on peut voir comment cette espérance de vie évolue avec le temps. C'est ce qui a été fait ici de manière systématique pour chaque année depuis 1950. Deux conclusions majeures s'imposent. D'une part, l'espérance de vie idéale qui ressort d'un tel calcul n'a pas cessé d'augmenter depuis cinquante ans, à un rythme très soutenu, semblable à celui de la meilleure espérance de vie réellement observée. D'autre part, la suspicion d'irréalisme que l'on pouvait nourrir a priori à l'égard d'un tel indicateur s'évanouit lorsque l'on se rend compte que le niveau idéal reflétant les conditions d'une année donnée est atteint et parfois largement dépassé par presque tous les pays avancés 25 ans plus tard, au moins chez les femmes.

This analysis is not an attempt to estimate a biological limit of human longevity beyond which no human being can live but rather, in a much more pragmatic and modest fashion, to measure the life expectancy at birth of a population enjoying the lowest age- and cause-specific death rates in the world at a given time. By repeating the same calculations for different periods, we can also see how this life expectancy changes over time. This was done systematically for each year from 1950. We have reached two major conclusions. First, the ideal life expectancy that emerges from such calculations has not stopped increasing for the past 50 years, and has risen at a sustained pace, similar to that of the best life expectancy actually observed. In addition, the suspicions of implausibility that such an indicator may initially arouse prove unfounded when we realize that the ideal level reflecting the conditions of a given year is reached, and even largely exceeded at times, by almost all advanced countries 25 years on, among women at least.

Le texte a été rédigé pour être publié en anglais dans un ouvrage collectif commémorant le 10e anniversaire de REVES, le Réseau espérance de vie en santé.

Les cas d’extrême longévité ont toujours fasciné. D’après la Bible, le premier homme, Adam, aurait vécu 930 ans et d’autres après lui auraient fait encore mieux, tels Hénoch mort à 965 ans ou le champion des champions, Mathusalem, avec ses 969 ans ! Tout cela n’est que légende. La Bible est pleine d’images épiques et l’âge des patriarches d’avant le déluge était davantage fait pour frapper les imaginations que pour relater la réalité. Pour leurs successeurs d’après le déluge, les estimations sont d’ailleurs beaucoup plus « raisonnables » : 275 ans pour Abraham, 180 pour Isaac, 147 pour Jacob, 110 pour Joseph...

Humanity has always been fascinated by extreme longevity. According to the Bible, the first man, Adam, lived 930 years, and some of his descendents lived even longer: Enoch died at 965, and Methuselah, the champion of them all, lived to 969! Of course, these are all legends. The Bible is full of epic stories and the image of these age-old patriarchs who lived before the flood is meant to stir imagination, not to reflect reality. After the flood, the patriarchs began to die at more reasonable ages: Abraham lived to the age of 275, Isaac died at 180, Jacob at 147, Joseph at 110, etc.

Background Venezuela is one of the most violent countries in the world. According to the United Nations, homicide rates in the country increased from 32.9 to 61.9 per 100 000 people between 2000 and 2014. This upsurge coincided with a slowdown in life expectancy improvements. We estimate mortality trends and quantify the impact of violence-related deaths and other causes of death on life expectancy and lifespan inequality in Venezuela. Methods Life tables were computed with corrected age-specific mortality rates from 1996 to 2013. From these, changes in life expectancy and lifespan inequality were decomposed by age and cause of death using a continuous-change model. Lifespan inequality, or variation in age at death, is measured by the standard deviation of the age-at-death distribution. Results From 1996 to 2013 in Venezuela, female life expectancy rose 3.57 [95% confidence interval (CI): 3.08–4.09] years [from 75.79 (75.98–76.10) to 79.36 (78.97–79.68)], and lifespan inequality fell 1.03 (–2.96 to 1.26) years [from 18.44 (18.01–19.00) to 17.41 (17.30–18.27)]. Male life expectancy increased 1.64 (1.09–2.25) years [from 69.36 (68.89–59.70) to 71.00 (70.53–71.39)], but lifespan inequality increased 0.95 (–0.80 to 2.89) years [from 20.70 (20.24–21.08) to 21.65 (21.34–22.12)]. If violence-related death rates had not risen over this period, male life expectancy would have increased an additional 1.55 years, and lifespan inequality would have declined slightly (–0.31 years). Conclusions As increases in violence-related deaths among young men (ages 15–39) have slowed gains in male life expectancy and increased lifespan inequality, Venezuelan males face more uncertainty about their age at death. There is an urgent need for more accurate mortality estimates in Venezuela.