IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/524kg.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A cohort is not representative of humanity

Author

Listed:
  • Kashnitsky, Ilya

    (Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute)

Abstract

In the freshly published research letter, Dong, Milholland, and Vijg (DMV) reported that they found strong evidence for a limit to human lifespan. Analyzing data from International Database on Longevity, they found that the yearly maximum reported age at death (MRAD, i.e. age at death of the world’s oldest person died in a specific year) stopped increasing from the mid-1990-s reaching a plateau at around 115 years. Even though the authors acknowledge that the data on “the supercentenarians … are still noisy and made of small samples”, they feel safe to conclude that “the results strongly suggest that the human lifespan has a natural limit”. I argue that the results and conclusions of the study are likely to be caused by just a data artifact, and that they are hardly generalizable for the humanity.

Suggested Citation

  • Kashnitsky, Ilya, 2017. "A cohort is not representative of humanity," OSF Preprints 524kg, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:524kg
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/524kg
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/58ede72f594d90024f917fec/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/524kg?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xiao Dong & Brandon Milholland & Jan Vijg, 2016. "Evidence for a limit to human lifespan," Nature, Nature, vol. 538(7624), pages 257-259, October.
    2. James W. Vaupel, 2010. "Biodemography of human ageing," Nature, Nature, vol. 464(7288), pages 536-542, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vladimir Canudas-Romo & Tianyu Shen & Collin Payne, 2021. "The role of reductions in old-age mortality in old-age population growth," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(44), pages 1073-1084.
    2. Filipe Costa Souza, 2020. "Relationships between best-practice and greatest possible life expectancies," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 331-339, September.
    3. Ming Gao & Fan Jiang & Jiwen Wang & Bi Wu, 2024. "Population ageing and income inequality in rural China: an 18-year analysis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Pinheiro, Pedro Cisalpino & Queiroz, Bernardo L, 2018. "Regional Disparities in Brazilian Adult Mortality: an analysis using Modal Age at Death (M) and Compression of Mortality (IQR)," OSF Preprints t2ey3, Center for Open Science.
    5. Siegfried Geyer & Sveja Eberhard & Bernhard Magnus W Schmidt & Jelena Epping & Juliane Tetzlaff, 2018. "Morbidity compression in myocardial infarction 2006 to 2015 in terms of changing rates and age at occurrence: A longitudinal study using claims data from Germany," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-19, August.
    6. D. Dragone & H. Strulik, 2017. "Human Health and Aging over an Infinite Time Horizon," Working Papers wp1104, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    7. Nicole L. Van Der Gaag & Govert Ewout Bijwaard & Joop de Beer & Luc Bonneux, 2015. "A multistate model to project elderly disability in case of limited data," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(3), pages 75-106.
    8. Melinda Heinz & Nicholas Cone & Grace Da Rosa & Alex J. Bishop & Tanya Finchum, 2017. "Examining Supportive Evidence for Psychosocial Theories of Aging within the Oral History Narratives of Centenarians," Societies, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-21, April.
    9. Duncan Gillespie & Meredith Trotter & Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2014. "Divergence in Age Patterns of Mortality Change Drives International Divergence in Lifespan Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(3), pages 1003-1017, June.
    10. Gregorio Gimenez & Ana Isabel Gil-Lacruz & Marta Gil-Lacruz, 2021. "Is Happiness Linked to Subjective Life Expectancy? A Study of Chilean Senior Citizens," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(17), pages 1-12, August.
    11. Edouard Debonneuil & Anne Eyraud-Loisel & Frédéric Planchet, 2018. "Can Pension Funds Partially Manage Longevity Risk by Investing in a Longevity Megafund?," Risks, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-27, July.
    12. Felipe Vásquez & Gibran Vita & Daniel B. Müller, 2018. "Food Security for an Aging and Heavier Population," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-19, October.
    13. Ting Li & James Anderson, 2013. "Shaping human mortality patterns through intrinsic and extrinsic vitality processes," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(12), pages 341-372.
    14. Jackie Li & Jia Liu, 2020. "A modified extreme value perspective on best-performance life expectancy," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 345-375, December.
    15. Richmond, Peter & Roehner, Bertrand M. & Irannezhad, Ali & Hutzler, Stefan, 2021. "Mortality: A physics perspective," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 566(C).
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6n8ctn4s591erei1a40c2vlf7 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Hugo Mell & Lou Safra & Yann Algan & Nicolas Baumard & Coralie Chevallier, 2017. "Childhood environmental harshness predicts coordinated health and reproductive strategies: A cross-sectional study of a nationally representative sample from France," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/6n8ctn4s591, Sciences Po.
    18. Shulgin, Sergey & Scherbov, Sergey & Zinkina, Yulia & Novikov, Kirill, 2017. "Medical-Demographic Differentiation According to Educational Level," Working Papers 041719, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    19. Finkel, Elizabeth, 2014. "Is modern farm technology a saviour or a threat?," 2014: Ethics, Efficiency and Food Security: Feeding the 9 Billion, Well, 26-28 August 2014 225570, Crawford Fund.
    20. Oliver Razum & Albrecht Jahn, 2016. "Molecular and genomic sciences in health: apply the established rules of evidence," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 61(4), pages 405-407, May.
    21. Ana Debón & Steven Haberman & Francisco Montes & Edoardo Otranto, 2021. "Do Different Models Induce Changes in Mortality Indicators? That Is a Key Question for Extending the Lee-Carter Model," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-16, February.

    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:osf:osfxxx:524kg. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    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.