Mortality statistics for the oldest-old

The main purposes of this paper is to evaluate the quality of Canadian data among the oldest-old (80+) over the 1951-1995 period, and to compare estimations of Canadian probabilities of death based on the extinct generation method with those of other developed countries in order to ascertain whether Canada experiences a distinct low mortality profile. The evaluation of the data quality suggests that Canadian data are quite good up to the age of 100, and that the main problems concern the centenarians (overstatement of age at death and errors in census age declarations). International comparisons on the basis of two mortality indicators for the 80-99 age-interval lead to the same conclusion: Canadian mortality is lower than in most European countries. The best match is still with the United States.