Abstract
This paper uses mortality fan charts to illustrate prospective future male mortality. These fan charts show both the most likely path of male mortality and the bands of uncertainty surrounding that path. The fan charts are based on a model of male mortality that is known to provide a good fit to UK mortality data. The fan charts suggest that there are clear limits to longevity—that future mortality rates are very uncertain and tend to become more uncertain the further ahead the forecast—and that forecasts of future mortality uncertainty must also take account of uncertainty in the parameters of the underlying mortality model.
Highlights
As every schoolchild knows, the oldest living man was Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah.Genesis tells us that he survived to the ripe old age of 969 years 1 and died in the same year as theGreat Flood
The mortality fan charts presented here are a useful way of forecasting future mortality rates
They quantify the uncertainty in our mortality projections and provide an intuitively revealing way of visually representing that uncertainty: put the wider the fan charts, the more uncertainty there is
Summary
The oldest living man was Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah. Evidence has been growing over the last quarter century that the longevity of men in developed countries has been improving considerably Demographers such as Vaupel et al [1], Tuljapurkar et al [2], Oeppen and Vaupel [3], and Tuljapurkar [4], argue that there is no natural upper limit to the length of human life and that we could be well on the way to living as long as Methuselah. – these charts showing some central projection (such as themortality median, mode or mean) of but alsofan thecharts degree of are quantitative uncertainty surrounding future rates, and have been the forecasted mortality rate, surrounded by bounds showing the probabilities that future mortality used with considerable success by the Bank of England in its efforts to promote public debate on UK will lie within specified ranges. Fan charts are ideal for showing the most likely future monetary policy. but outcomes, the degree of quantitative uncertainty surrounding future mortality rates, and have been used with considerable success by the Bank of England in its efforts to promote public
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