2018/12/05 by Francisco Villavicencio, José Manuel Aburto, Villavicencio, Francisco +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Health Professions · Social Sciences · #FOS: Biological sciences #Global Health Care Issues #Health disparities and outcomes #Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1812.01952
arxiv created 2018/12/05 · openalex publication_date 2018/12/05 · arxiv updated 2018/12/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A recent study in the 2017 Living to 100 Monograph published by the Society of Actuaries suggests, in contrast to previous research, that the risk of death after 110 increases with age. By fitting a Gompertz model to estimated central death rates for the oldest old, the authors challenge existing theory and empirical research indicating a deceleration of mortality at older ages and the emergence of a plateau. We argue that their results are inconclusive for three reasons: (1) the data selection was arbitrary; (2) the statistical analysis was inappropriate; and (3) the presentation of the results is misleading and inadequate. We therefore claim that the hypothesis that the human force of mortality increases after age 110 has not been proved.