Is the Pace of Japanese Mortality Decline Converging Toward International Trends?

Abstract

FROM THE END of World War II until recently, the pace and magnitude of the Japanese mortality decline were unprecedented in human history. Records in the years immediately after the war are incomplete, but an estimate of Japanese life expectancy at birth in 1947 is around 52 years (Nanjo and Kobayashi 1985). Life expectancy at that time was about 67-69 years in North America and the less war-ravaged parts of Western Europe. By 1951 Japan's postwar recovery had begun, its statistical system had improved, and life expectancy had risen to about 61 years.' From 1951 until 1980, life expectancy rose at an average rate of about five years per decade. As a result, male and female Japanese life expectancies surpassed those of the traditional world leaders, including the Scandinavian countries, just prior to 1980.2 By 1996 female and male life expectancies in Japan were 83.6 and 77.0, respectively, ahead of all other large national populations. Japan's closest competitors are now, for women, France and Switzerland at 82 years and, for men, Sweden and Iceland at 76 and 77 years, respectively (Population Reference Bureau 1997). Japan's rapid rise to the top in matters of health and longevity offers an unusual opportunity for reflection on the nature and especially the speed of historical mortality change. Let us consider a few simple questions: Can the pace of the postwar decline in Japanese mortality continue, or will future gains come at a slower pace? Can we predict what the future rate of improvement will be? Without pretending to foresee the future, in this brief note I recapitulate an earlier argument, provide some updated supporting evidence for that argument, and suggest some ideas for further analyses of these questions.