Life expectancy at age 60 has been increasing steadily since the 1950s, by about one year per decade. Accordingly, life expectancy at birth for women is almost always higher than for men. Central to this transformation has been the epidemiological transition from predominantly infectious causes of death to a predominance of deaths due to chronic and degenerative diseases. The epidemiological transition also entailed a shift in the age pattern of mortality, from one in which childhood diseases and deaths were common to a situation where disease and mortality are highly concentrated at older ages.