Theoretical development in the area of health change in an older population began with the realization that the rapid mortality decline among the old beginning in the late 1960s could be linked to important population health consequences (15, 75). Fries (36) generated some of the interest in trends in health with his promotion of the idea that there was an ongoing “compression of morbidity.” His assertion rested on assumptions that mortality at the older ages would reach a limit beyond which there could be no further decline and that there was an ongoing increase in the age of disability onset. Under these conditions, there would be a.
