07 November 2012

The death of death?

The UK Office of National Statistics just published a report, available here, showing that mortality rates (age-standardised) in 2011 were the lowest ever recorded for England and Wales, at 6,236 deaths per million population for males and 4,458 deaths per million population for females.

Mortality rates have been dropping dramatically. For men they were twice the 2011 level in 1980. For women, where the mortality rate is substantially lower, the 2011 level is half that in 1974.
There's no sign of leveling off so on the naive assumption the same trend continued there would be no more deaths after 2042 for men, and after 2048 for women.
Good news? Remember Methuselah -- it ain't necessarily so.

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