Similarities in the pattern of mortality changes over time are often observed across populations. Due to these similarities, an increasing number of studies forecast changes in mortality using common mortality trends for many populations. We here ask, is there a universal pattern of mortality decline across populations? If so, in which mortality indicators can we observe this pattern? To answer these questions, cluster analysis is applied to the time-index of many populations, indicators and for both sexes, found with a singular value decomposition. Our results suggest similar patterns of mortality decline among non-Eastern-European countries and across indicators, but differences between females and males.