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Demography and Gerontology: Mortality Trends Among the Oldest Old

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 1997

EMILY GRUNDY
Affiliation:
Age Concern Institute of Gerontology, King's College, Cornwall House, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK.

Abstract

This paper provides a brief introduction to demography and population science and the newly emerged subfield of the demography of ageing. Links with gerontology are explored. Recent work on mortality at very high ages and on the black-white mortality ‘cross-over’ reported from the United States is then reviewed. These topics are important substantively and theoretically and also serve to illustrate demographic approaches to data and data analysis. Analytic approaches to the topics reviewed have had to be imaginative as there are major problems with data on very old people. Recent work indicates that the mortality of very old people, including centenarians, has fallen considerably, at least in those countries where good data exist. The mortality ‘cross-over’, however, appears to be artefactual, at least at ages under 95 years.

Type
Progress Report
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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