IN THEIR WELL-KNOWN Science article, "Broken limits of life expectancy," Oep-pen and Vaupel (2002) showed that the highest life expectancy observed in a given year increased linearly from 1840 up to 2000 at the annual pace of 0.25 years. They demonstrated that "best performance" life expectancy in the past repeatedly refuted experts who posited a looming upper limit to possible extension of improvements in mortality. Their analysis, using measures at the country level and limited to data for female populations, received wide attention but also fueled major controversy, especially when used to extrapolate future improvements in life expectancy at the same pace. Half a decade later, it is possible to expand the set of data used by Oeppen and Vaupel with a large quantity of additional data, including both data prior to 1840 that can inform us about the pace of life expectancy progress in earlier times, and data for the most recent period, a time that may herald a coming change in life expectancy trends.
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