Publication at Faculty of Science, First Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2009
Abstract
The aim of this study is to analyse the development of process of rectangularization of survival curve in selected European countries. This process is defined as a trend toward a more rectangular shape of the survival curve due to decreasing mortality at younger ages and concentration of deaths around the mean age at death.
Using some measures (for example well-known C-family measures or Keyfitz` H) derived from life table functions for our selected countries we demonstrate that rectangularization (or compression of mortality) is characteristic for the long-term trend in human mortality during the past century, in some countries the observed rectangularization process has been replaced by a shift of the survival curve to higher ages.