Individual Perceptions of Mortality Decline

Demographers are well aware of the vast decreases in mortality among industrialized countries during the past century, and they generally expect mortality decline to continue into the future. But how do individuals perceive the chances for their future survival? Survivorship expectations should influence a wide array of economic decisions and thus well-being, from the amount of education to obtain to the amount of money to save for retirement. Previous research exploring survivorship expectations in panel data has shown that they are correlated with current health status, behaviors, and with future mortality, and that they approximate life table quantities. In this paper, I take a closer look at the accuracy of survivorship expectations along two main dimensions. I examine systematic biases in self-reported survivorship expectations by racial group, and I assess the updating of survivorship expectations over time within a cohort and between cohorts. I find an interesting mix of irrational optimism and pessimism among groups identified by race, sex, and age, but I also find evidence that over time, individuals appear to understand that mortality decline is occurring. ∗PRELIMINARY. PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION. Postdoctoral Scholar, RAND Corporation, [email protected]. This paper was prepared for Session 74 of the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America in Los Angeles. I would like to thank Mike Hurd, Ron Lee, and Jim Smith for helpful comments. I acknowledge support from NIH grants T32 AG000244 and T32 HD 07329.