A Decade after Kannisto : Continued Reductions in Mortality at Advanced Ages

This study explores the development of old-age mortality in low-mortality countries with a particular focus on the last ten to fifteen years using data from the "Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old Age Mortality". The analysis shows that the general trend of considerable reductions in old-age mortality has persisted since Kannisto’s extensive analyses in the early 1990s. For most countries, in recent years mortality has been decreasing faster than in the past for males in their eighties and for females at all ages between 80 and 99. The country-specific patterns are heterogeneous: some countries, such as France, Italy, and Japan, were able to decrease old-age mortality at an accelerating pace despite having comparatively low mortality levels.; while other countries, such as the US or the Netherlands, showed a deceleration in mortality improvements.

Countries of the former Eastern bloc, such as the former GDR and the Czech Republic, made remarkable progress in old-age survival after the collapse of their socialist systems. Data quality issues or worsening mortality in other post-communist countries do not allow us to draw any generalizations about the developments in old-age mortality in Eastern Europe.

The continued and even accelerated progress in the majority of countries with very low mortality gives no indication that there are biological or theoretical limits to mortality reductions.