Explaining mortality rate plateaus
Open Access
- 18 December 2001
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 98 (26) , 15383-15386
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.261228098
Abstract
We propose a stochastic model of aging to explain deviations from exponential growth in mortality rates commonly observed in empirical studies. Mortality rate plateaus are explained as a generic consequence of considering death in terms of first passage times for processes undergoing a random walk with drift. Simulations of populations with age-dependent distributions of viabilities agree with a wide array of experimental results. The influence of cohort size is well accounted for by the stochastic nature of the model.Keywords
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