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Demography
Published in: Demography 4/2014

01-08-2014

Aging in the Context of Cohort Evolution and Mortality Selection

Author: Hui Zheng

Published in: Demography | Issue 4/2014

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Abstract

This study examines historical patterns of aging through the perspectives of cohort evolution and mortality selection, where the former emphasizes the correlation across cohorts in the age dependence of mortality rates, and the latter emphasizes cohort change in the acceleration of mortality over the life course. In the analysis of historical cohort mortality data, I find support for both perspectives. The rate of demographic aging, or the rate at which mortality accelerates past age 70, is not fixed across cohorts; rather, it is affected by the extent of mortality selection at young and late ages. This causes later cohorts to have higher rates of demographic aging than earlier cohorts. The rate of biological aging, approximating the rate of the senescence process, significantly declined between the mid- and late-nineteenth century birth cohorts and stabilized afterward. Unlike the rate of demographic aging, the rate of biological aging is not affected by mortality selection earlier in the life course but rather by cross-cohort changes in young-age mortality, which cause lower rates of biological aging in old age among later cohorts. These findings enrich theories of cohort evolution and have implications for the study of limits on the human lifespan and evolution of aging.
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Appendix
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Footnotes
1
The initial mortality rate is denoted by ln(R 0), with subscript 0 indicating that this is the intercept of the logarithm of the Gompertz mortality curve. The initial mortality rate should not be confused with the infant mortality rate, which is denoted by ln(R 0–1) in this article.
 
2
I also considered ages 65 and 75 as the starting ages for calculating the rates of demographic and biological aging, but these changes to my method did not change the main findings.
 
3
I did not use the other two methods outlined by Strehler and Mildvan because they either produced unrealistically low values of K or were not appropriate for heterogeneous human populations (Strehler and Mildvan 1960).
 
4
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this potential problem.
 
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Metadata
Title
Aging in the Context of Cohort Evolution and Mortality Selection
Author
Hui Zheng
Publication date
01-08-2014
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Demography / Issue 4/2014
Print ISSN: 0070-3370
Electronic ISSN: 1533-7790
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0306-9

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