The principal cause of low death rate in a year, divided by population in that same year, is population growth. Most people dying today are of a reasonable age, i.e. they were born many decades ago. But there were far fewer people alive many decades ago than there are now, so the death rate in a growing population looks strangely low. If you naively divide the rate by the population it looks like people are living far beyond a century, but that only applies for a steady state population.
Similarly, the death rate in a static or falling population looks high after a previous period of growth, even if nothing particularly bad is happening. I expect the funeral business to expand as a relative sector of the economy; as the millions of people who were born in the twentieth century gradually approach old age, their deaths will grow exponentially the way their births did.
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andrewducker) wrote2012-06-23 12:00 am
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Similarly, the death rate in a static or falling population looks high after a previous period of growth, even if nothing particularly bad is happening. I expect the funeral business to expand as a relative sector of the economy; as the millions of people who were born in the twentieth century gradually approach old age, their deaths will grow exponentially the way their births did.
no subject