The Survivor Ratio Method for Estimating Numbers at High Ages

The number of centenarians in Brazil: Indirect estimates based on death certificates

“…Our approach follows the method of extinct generations to reconstruct the centenarian population from cohort mortality data (Coale and Caselli 1990;Elo and Preston 1994;Bourbeau andLebel 2000, Thatcher, Kannisto, andAndreev 2002). Assuming international migration is negligible, we accumulate the number of cohort deaths to persons at ages above 100, from 1991 to 2006, to estimate the number of centenarians by sex, as of January 1 st of 1991.…”

“…However, we remain skeptical about the population counts reported by the Brazilian census bureau. At older ages, data are beset with a variety of problems in many populations (Coale and Kisker 1986, Kannisto 1988, Coale and Caselli 1990, Preston, Elo, and Stewart 1999, Thatcher, Kannisto, and Andreev 2002, and there is no reason to believe these errors are absent or less frequent in Brazil. Indeed, a simple inspection of the ratio of the population aged 100 and older to 85 reveals notable discrepancies between Brazil and other selected countries of presumably higher quality data (Table 1).…”

Phantoms Never Die: Living with Unreliable Population Data

“…Death counts are available for individual ages above 90. The ONS use the Kannisto-Thatcher (KT) method (an adaptation of the extinct cohort method; see, Thatcher et al, 2002) to calculate population estimates for individual ages up to age 104 (ONS, 2014).…”

Assessments of mortality at oldest-old ages by province in China's 2000 and 2010 censuses

“…Research on mortality at oldest-old ages (ages 80 or older) has received increasing attention in Western countries since the mid-1980s, with studies on age trajectories, the accuracy of data, and levels of mortality (Kannisto, 1988(Kannisto, , 1994Kannisto, Lauristen, Thatcher et al, 1994;Kostaki, 2000;Kostaki and Lanke, 2000;Jeune and Vaupel, 1995;Nagnur, 1986;Robine, Crimmins, Horiuchi et al, 2007;Robine, Vaupel, Jeune et al, 1997;Suzman, Willis and Manton, 1992;Thatcher, 1992;Thatcher, Kannisto and Andreev, 2002). In doing so, researchers have used various mathematic functions to simulate age trajectories of mortality at oldest-old ages.…”