Gompertz Law of Mortality

What it states

Benjamin Gompertz observed in 1825 that adult human mortality rate rises exponentially with age: the risk of dying in any given year roughly doubles every 8 years from about age 30 onward. Mathematically: μ(t) = αe^βt.

What it means

• A 30-year-old has a ~1 in 1,000 annual mortality risk.
• A 65-year-old has ~1 in 100.
• An 85-year-old has ~1 in 10.
• This is steeper than most biological intuition allows for; it’s the reason age is the dominant risk factor for nearly all causes of death.

Late-life plateau

The Gompertz curve appears to bend (slow) after ~95–100 years — the “late-life mortality plateau” observed in flies, mice, and (controversially) humans. Whether this plateau is real in humans or an artefact of small sample sizes at extreme ages is debated.

Implications for longevity interventions

• An intervention that simply shifts the Gompertz curve to the right (delaying age-related mortality) produces compression of morbidity.
• An intervention that flattens the slope produces a more dramatic effect.
• Interventions that act only on a single disease leave the rest of the Gompertz curve essentially intact — the mortality risk gets reassigned to other causes (“competing risks”).
• This is part of why geroscience interventions, which act broadly, have greater theoretical leverage than disease-specific drugs.

Related entries

Healthspan vs lifespan, Geroscience hypothesis, Centenarians.