IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v435y2005i7043d10.1038_nature03593.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Average remaining lifetimes can increase as human populations age

Author

Listed:
  • Warren C. Sanderson

    (State University of New York at Stony Brook
    International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA))

  • Sergei Scherbov

    (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
    Vienna Institute of Demography)

Abstract

How long have you got? Conventional measures of age count years since birth. But as lives lengthen, it becomes important for many aspects of decision making to think of age also in terms of years left until death or in proportion to the expanding life span. Warren C. Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov, two of the authors of the paper “The end of world population growth” (Nature 412, 543–545; 2001) that has been influential in shaping population predictions, have turned their attention to this aspect of ageing. They present a new measure of age, the median age of the population standardized for expected remaining years of life. The populations of developed nations such as Germany, Japan and the United States are growing older as measured by median ages, but in the near future they will experience periods in which they grow younger on this new measure, with implications for matters such as the cost of medical care, retirement and the accumulation of capital.

Suggested Citation

  • Warren C. Sanderson & Sergei Scherbov, 2005. "Average remaining lifetimes can increase as human populations age," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7043), pages 811-813, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:435:y:2005:i:7043:d:10.1038_nature03593
    DOI: 10.1038/nature03593
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03593
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature03593?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:435:y:2005:i:7043:d:10.1038_nature03593. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.