Only a few countries have official population statistics which are sufficiently accurate to produce reliable estimates of death rates at high ages. For other countries, there are several methods which can be used to produce improved estimates. The choice is important for research on old age...

A recently completed series of life tables from 1751 to 1995 is used for identifying four stages of mortality transition in Finland, separated by the years 1880, 1945 and 1970. The cyclical fluctuation of the death rate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is measured and examined in...

Compression of mortality is measured here in four ways: (1) by standard deviation of the age at death above the mode; (2) by standard deviation of the age at death in the highest quartile; (3) by the inter-quartile range; and (4) by the shortest age interval in which a given proportion of deaths...