The question of the human mortality plateau: Contrasting insights by longevity pioneers

Dang, Linh Hoang Khanh; Camarda, Carlo Giovanni; Meslé, France; Ouellette, Nadine; Robine, Jean‐Marie; Vallin, Jacques

doi:10.4054/demres.2023.48.11

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…When observed death rates are employed instead, there is significant variability in the estimate of the AUM at older ages. Clearly, employing the AUM index for detecting mortality deceleration, and eventually the existence of a mortality plateau, has great potential; our proposed indicator could thus contribute to the current debate about the mortality plateau at the oldest ages (see, e.g., Barbi et al 2018;Dang et al 2023;Gampe 2021;Newman 2018). The quantification of the statistical uncertainty associated with the estimated AUM estimate should be a critical aspect to inform such analysis, especially for small sample sizes, and we plan to pursue this in our future research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Average Uneven Mortality index: Building on the ‘e-dagger’ measure of lifespan inequality

Bonetti,

Basellini,

Nigri

2024

DemRes

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Average Uneven Mortality index: Building on the ‘e-dagger’ measure of lifespan inequality

Bonetti,

Basellini,

Nigri

2024

DemRes

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“…Clearly, there is great potential in employing the AUM index for detecting mortality deceleration, and eventually the existence of a mortality plateau; our proposed indicator could thus contribute to the current debate about the mortality plateau at the oldest ages (see, e.g. Barbi et al, 2018;Dang et al, 2023;Gampe, 2021). The uncertainty related to the AUM estimate should be a critical aspect to inform such analysis, and we plan to pursue this approach in future research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Average Uneven Mortality index: Building on the "e-dagger" measure of lifespan inequality

Bonetti¹,

Basellini²,

Nigri³

2023

Preprint

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In recent years, lifespan inequality has become an important indicator of population health, alongside more established longevity measures. Uncovering the statistical properties of lifespan inequality measures can provide novel insights on the study of mortality developments.We revisit the "e-dagger" measure of lifespan inequality, introduced in Vaupel and Canudas-Romo (2003). We note that, conditioning on surviving at least until age a, e-dagger(a) is equal to the covariance between the conditional lifespan random variable Ta and its transformation through its own cumulative hazard function (hence generalizing a result first noted in Schmertmann, 2020). We then derive an upper bound for e-dagger(a). Leveraging this result, we introduce the "Average Uneven Mortality" (AUM) index, a novel relative mortality index that can be used to analyze mortality patterns. We discuss some general features of the index, including its relationship with a constant ("even") force of mortality, and we study how it changes over time.The use of the AUM index is illustrated through an application to observed period and cohort death rates as well as to period life-table death rates from the Human Mortality Database. We explore the behavior of the index across age and over time, and we study its relationship with life expectancy. The AUM index at birth declined over time until the 1950s, when it reverted its trend. The index generally increases over age and reduces with increasing values of life expectancy, with differences between the period and cohort perspectives.We elaborate on Vaupel and Canudas-Romo’s e-dagger measure, deriving its upper bound. We exploit this result to introduce a novel mortality indicator, which enlarges the toolbox of available methods for the study of mortality dynamics. We also develop some new routines to compute e-dagger(a) and σ_Ta from death rates, and show that they have higher precision when compared to conventional and available functions, particularly for calculations involving older ages.

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“…The plateau model is the most conservative option and any other plausible models would only decrease her prior probability for reaching her claimed age, so this criticism is unwarranted. This year a study examining updated French statistics in the IDL database concluded that a plateau was not a good model above 105 years of age (11). A Gompertz model was described as a better fit.…”

Section: The Conspiracy Theory Of An Identity Switchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comment on “The real facts supporting Jeanne Calment as the oldest ever human”

Gibbs,

Zak

2023

Preprint

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In 1997 Jeanne Calment died at a claimed age of 122 years and 164 days. The authenticity of her age was validated by Michel Allard and Jean-Marie Robine who published popular books about her case. In 2018 Nikolay Zak presented evidence that Jeanne Calment’s daughter Yvonne had assumed her mother’s identity. In 2019 the original validators and their colleagues defended their work and tried to refute the points of evidence made by Zak. In this comment we examine their arguments and find that they do not hold up. We provide new damning evidence in favour of the identity switch hypothesis.

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The question of the human mortality plateau: Contrasting insights by longevity pioneers

Abstract: Introduction 2 Data 3 Methods 4 Results 4.1 Constant vs. Gompertz mortality after age 105 4.2 Cohort and gender effects on mortality after age 105 5 Discussion 6 Conclusion References

Cited by 12 publications

References 30 publications

The Average Uneven Mortality index: Building on the ‘e-dagger’ measure of lifespan inequality

The Average Uneven Mortality index: Building on the ‘e-dagger’ measure of lifespan inequality

The Average Uneven Mortality index: Building on the "e-dagger" measure of lifespan inequality

Comment on “The real facts supporting Jeanne Calment as the oldest ever human”

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