Ageing of the Dying, Ageing of Experiencing Death

Alain Monnier, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Sophie Pennec, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Theoretical framework Demography tends to consider death as an instantaneous process concerning only the deceased. But death is a process, which spreads in time: before being dead, one is dying, and this part of life involves more and more Society and its institutions. Moreover, death does not involve only the deceased but is also an experience faced by his closest relations and in particular by the members of his/her family Considering death from this point of view, in the case of France, our presentation deals with 2 sides: 1 ? the dying are older and older; the experience of a death, within the family, occurs later and later, and is more frequent. Data Three different data sources will be used: · Macro demographic data, taken from vital statistics (distribution of deaths according to age, birth cohort life tables); · Results of micro simulations that will ?re-create? the conditions of the building of families, and how death strikes these families; · Data from the survey ?study on family history? which has been carried out in France in 1999 (380,000 persons). Results 1- The dyings are older and older: In a country like France, nowadays, 90% of the persons who die are 60 years old and above, and 50% are 80 years and above. Deaths are therefore, in most of the cases, deaths of old persons. This is a new phenomenon in the history of humanity. Up to the end of the XIX century, there was, still in France, more people dying under 60 than over 60, (60% vs. 40%). Problems occurring due to the ageing of the dying are of many kinds: for example, public health and caring (nursing home for persons reaching the end of their life) as well as ethical problems (e.g. euthanasia). 2- The experience of death, within the family, occurs later and later: Everybody knows that the death of parents occurs later nowadays. This is also the case for the death of a spouse, a sibling, and also a child. In between birth cohort 1900 and 1950, the mean age of a person facing the death of his mother have increased from 37 to 52; the mean age at widowhood moved from 60 to 72 for women and from 61 to 77 for men; the mean age at the death of a sibling increased from 40 to nearly 65 or 70. We can also notice that the mean age of a woman facing the death of a child has been also deferred, moving from 46 to 69. 3- The experience of death, within the family occurs more often: The experience of a person facing the death of relatives older than him/her (grand-parents, parents, siblings...) occurs more often, as it becomes less frequent to die before an older person than you. For the birth cohort 1900, 31% of women, and 39% of men died before their mother, for the birth cohort 1950, these percentages are 11% and 18% respectively. So, a woman belonging to birth cohort 1900 faced the experience of the death of her mother in 69% of the cases; those of the birth cohort 1950 will face this experience in 89% of the cases.