Trends in scale and shape of survival curves.
The ageing of the population is an issue in wealthy countries worldwide because of increasing costs for health care and welfare. Survival curves taken from demographic life tables may help shed light on the hypotheses that humans are living longer and that human populations are growing older. We describe a methodology that enables us to obtain separate measurements of scale and shape variances in survival curves. Specifically, 'living longer' is associated with the scale variance of survival curves, whereas 'growing older' is associated with the shape variance. We show how the scale and shape of survival curves have changed over time during recent decades, based on period and cohort female life tables for selected wealthy countries. Our methodology will be useful for performing better tracking of ageing statistics and it is possible that this methodology can help identify the causes of current trends in human ageing.
X-ray Imaging Center, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, San 31, Hyoja-dong, Pohang 790-784, Korea. bmweon@hotmail.com
Byung Mook
BM
Weon
Jung Ho
JH
Je
D015331:Cohort Studies; D019049:Developed Countries; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008017:Life Expectancy / Q000639:trends*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends; D011157:Population Dynamics / Q000639:trends; D016019:Survival Analysis; D013548:Sweden