Death-Rates in Great Britain and Sweden: Expression of Specific Mortality Rates as Products of Two Factors, and some Consequences thereof

Abstract

1. The specific mortality rates for males, females and the total population for England and Wales, for Scotland and for Sweden, have been fitted to a formula ƒ (t, θ) = α. (t—θ) βθ where ƒ (t, θ) is the specific mortality rate at a time t for age θ, β0 is a function depending solely on the age θ, and α (t —θ)depends only on the time of birth (t — θ). The results are in substantial agreement with those obtained by less refined methods in the previous paper. The probable errors of the values found for à and for β have been calculated.2. It is shown that the β0 curves for the Scottish and the English males are approximately represented by the Makeham-Gompertz formula A+Becθ, where A, B and c have suitable values. The other β0 curves do not appear to conform exactly to a formula of this type.3. With the help of the representation of β0 by the Makeham-Gompertz expression the effect of variation of α on the survival curves, the death curves, and the expectation of life has been determined. It is shown that with the range of values of α experienced in Britain during the last 50 years, the most marked effect is most likely to be experienced in the future between the ages of 65 and 85, a very considerable increase of people of these ages being likely provided that the relationship exhibited by the statistics up to the present date is maintained in the future.Though the Makeham-Gompertz formula does not hold in the case of the English and Scottish females, nor for the Swedish statistics, these approximate sufficiently closely to the values for the English and Scottish males, to allow of the conclusion deduced in the latter case being extended to the former.4. It is strongly emphasised that the validity of all the predictions depends upon a hypothesis of extrapolation which, however attractive in the light of the figures so far available, might not be fulfilled under certain contingencies.

Why did Danish women’s life expectancy stagnate? The influence of interwar generations’ smoking behaviour

“…1). The strong cohort effect identified for the interwar generations of Danish women adds to the few examples of cohort effects on mortality patterns in populations [1][2][3]. The difference in our study, however, is that the population experienced a mortality increase rather than an improvement [4].…”

“…The mortality pattern of interwar generations of Danish women (born 1919-1939), however, provides an addition to a few other examples: the decline in mortality rates in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, starting approximately in 1850 [1]; improvement in mortality of Japanese people born around 1915 [2] and mortality improvement in the UK for cohorts born between 1925 and 1945 [3], which was more rapid than for those born before and after this period. It is now well known that the stagnation in Danish women's life expectancy is explained by the increased mortality of the interwar generations [4].…”

Gene-Environment Interactions Controlling Energy and Glucose Homeostasis and the Developmental Origins of Obesity

“…Some of the earliest evidence in support of the importance of the early life environment in determining long-term health came from studies in the United Kingdom and Sweden in the 1930s demonstrating that, within any one age group, death rates were most affected by the date of birth and not the year of death (248). Further support for the importance of the neonatal environment on long-term health emerged almost 50 years later in studies in Norway by Forsdahl (155) demonstrating that geographical variations in atherosclerotic disease were not associated with current mortality rates but correlated strongly with past infant mortality rates.…”

Quantification of excess risk for diabetes for those born in times of hunger, in an entire population of a nation, across a century

“…Since the 1930s it has been argued that the environment of early development can have long-lasting effects on health (2). Developmental origins of health and disease are often studied through "natural experiments," where the impact of a clearly defined exposure to noncontrollable factors (such as famines) on the health of a subpopulation is studied.…”