The increase in life expectancy to over 80 years observed in many developed countries is associated with reduction in variation in the length of life among individuals. In general, low mortality countries enjoy low life disparity and compression of mortality around the modal age of death.

The paper presents the life-table dispersion measures and analysis results for Poland with special regard to the process of mortality compression. The following measures were presented: Gini coefficient, average inter-individual difference in age at death, modal age at death, inter-quartile range, standard deviation above the modal age at death and person-years lost (e-dagger). The empirical analysis employed data for the years 1958-2014 derived from the Human Mortality Database (HMD).

The observed tendency towards reduction in the dispersion of age at death was not uniform during the 50 year span analysed and actually stagnated in certain periods. In particular, the results for the male population do not indicate a definite trend towards reduction in mortality dispersion. The results for the female population demonstrate a reduction in age dispersion at death among women over time with regard to all measures, with the modal age at death advancing towards progressively older age groups.