29 percent per year, consistent with the hypothesis of the compression of morbidity.
The results in Tables 5 and 6 indicate that the long-term trends in the compression of morbidity applied to females as well as males, consistent with the short-term trends in Table 7 and in Hubert et al.
This column examines the future of the compression of morbidity thesis and its implications for social workers.
If, as the evidence seems to show, aging is a cumulative process of "wear and tear" in response to environmental demands, this era of stagnant, and perhaps downward, mobility could reverse the compression of morbidity (Seeman et al.
If we adopt a more optimistic assumption about compression of morbidity, then we should do everything possible to postpone illness later and later into life.
It has been little noted, moreover, that for the compression of morbidity to actually work we would also have to forswear intensive medical intervention at the end of life.