The relay for human longevity: country-specific contributions to the increase of the best-practice life expectancy.

This study investigates the long-term dynamics of longevity by taking into account the specific contribution of each country, and how this has changed over time, thus highlighting different timing and speeds of the evolution of life expectancy among the low-lowest mortality countries. Leveraging on quantile regression, we analyze the specific position of countries that have recorded the maximum (BPLE) and second-best life expectancy value at least once in the period 1960-2014, both at ages 0 and 65. Moving in this direction, the purpose of our contribution is to provide new perspectives on the untracked behavior that may be overshadowed by the maximum longevity levels.

A model with space-varying regression coefficients for clustering multivariate spatial count data.

Multivariate spatial count data are often segmented by unobserved space-varying factors that vary across space. In this setting, regression models that assume space-constant covariate effects could be too restrictive. Motivated by the analysis of cause-specific mortality data, we propose to estimate space-varying effects by exploiting a multivariate hidden Markov field.

Response to Comment on "The plateau of human mortality: Demography of longevity pioneers".

Beltrán-Sánchez based their comment on misleading calculations of the maximum survival age. With realistic numbers of people attaining age 105 and the estimated plateau, the Jeanne Calment record is indeed plausible.

The plateau of human mortality: Demography of longevity pioneers.

Theories about biological limits to life span and evolutionary shaping of human longevity depend on facts about mortality at extreme ages, but these facts have remained a matter of debate. Do hazard curves typically level out into high plateaus eventually, as seen in other species, or do exponential increases persist? In this study, we estimated hazard rates from data on all inhabitants of Italy aged 105 and older between 2009 and 2015 (born 1896-1910), a total of 3836 documented cases. We observed level hazard curves, which were essentially constant beyond age 105.