MORTALITY TRENDS

• Trends in national mortality rates •  

Graphs showing time trends in mortality rates

All-cause mortality at age 90-94 years in

England and Wales: 1841-2006

Graph showing all-cause mortality at age 90-94 years in England and Wales since 1841

Comment: Some of the people whose deaths contributed to the positions of the plotted lines at the left of this graph would have been born in the late 1740s, and would thus have been contemporaneous with Handel, Voltaire and Washington, and would have been over 70 when Victoria ascended the throne. One person who contributed to the position of the blue plotted line in 2005 was epidemiologist, Richard Doll, who died in that year aged 92. During his lifetime, mortality rates at age 90-94 decreased by a third.

Method: Mortality rates were downloaded from the Human Mortality Database (see www.mortality.org or www.humanmortality.de) on 4 December 2009. The plotted lines connect unsmoothed values.

WHO mortality rates for particular countries, ages and causes of death