| Sumario: | A study was conducted to examine variability of age at death within human populations. Findings indicate that this variability has decreased from about 65 years to 15 years since 1751 in Sweden. It is noted that most of this decline took place between the 1870s and the 1950s. It is revealed that, since then, variability in age at death has been almost constant in Sweden, Japan, and the U.S., contradicting predictions of a continuing rectangularization. It is indicated that the U.S. is represented by a relatively high level of variability when compared to Sweden and Japan. It is proposed that the historical compression of mortality might have had considerable behavioral and psychological impacts.
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