Abstract:

Life expectancy, both at birth & at later ages, has been increasing in recent years in developed countries. These increases pose serious challenges to the capacities of those countries to provide social & health services to their rapidly aging populations. Here, World Health Organization data are used to examine the causes of mortality changes in eleven developed countries, with the following purposes: (1) to describe the cause-specific mortality patterns associated with these changes & their cross-national variability; (2) to determine the potential for further mortality reductions; & (3) to locate patterns that can serve as the basis for formulating elements of a theory of mortality changes in societies that have attained very high levels of life expectancy, & in which the predominant health problems are chronic disease & disability.