| Summary: | 碩士 === 長庚大學 === 醫務管理學研究所 === 94 === The boundary of human longevity has long been debated among the demographers and biotech scientists. This paper examines the distribution of age at death in life tables of Taiwanese and Japanese populations. Gini index is employed to reveal the historical trends of concentration of the life table age at death during 1920-2003. We find the distribution tends to peak at the higher end of age of life table and the Gini index tends to decline correspondingly as the life expectancy at birth increases in both populations. We also find the Gini index tends to fluctuate more in female than in male population in both countries, possibly due to a cultural bias toward male offspring during the earlier times of the period studied.
The Gini index demonstrates a steady trend of converging at low values, an indication that both populations are reaching limits to the decrease of mortality. The results reveal a common tendency for the life expectancy to converge at high plateaus in both countries. It seems the developments in Taiwan and Japan paralleled each other, though recently a tendency to diverge has surfaced. We find the limit to life expectancy in Japan somewhat higher and disparity in age at death lower than in Taiwan, implying that further improvements in Taiwan is possible.
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