Redundancy exhaustion over the life course explains the observed ‘compensation law of mortality’ (mortality convergence at later life, when death rates are becoming relatively similar at advanced ages for different populations of the same biological species), as well as the observed late-life mortality deceleration, leveling-off, and mortality plateaus.
Accurate estimates of mortality at advanced ages are essential to improving forecasts of mortality and the population size of the oldest old age group. However, estimation of hazard rates at extremely old ages poses serious challenges to researchers: (1) The observed mortality deceleration may be at least partially an artifact of mixing different birth cohorts with different mortality (heterogeneity effect); (2) standard assumptions of hazard rate estimates may be invalid when risk of death is extremely high at old ages and (3) ages of very old people may be exaggerated.
...Study of several single-year extinct birth cohorts shows that mortality trajectory at advanced ages follows the Gompertz law up to the ages 102-105 years without a noticeable deceleration. Earlier reports of mortality deceleration (deviation of mortality from the Gompertz law) at ages below 100 appear to be artifacts of mixing together several birth cohorts with different mortality levels and using cross-sectional instead of cohort data. Age exaggeration and crude assumptions applied to mortality estimates at advanced ages may also contribute to mortality underestimation at very advanced ages.
For you maybe. Those interested in biological senescence need a general theory that accounts for late life mortality deceleration. Attributing it to “data collection problems” fails to capture the phenomenon.
A more conventional explanation:
Or… it really is just data collection problems. Via FightAging, “Mortality measurement at advanced ages: A study of the Social Security Administration Death Master File” (emphasis added):
No, since late life mortality deceleration and mortality plateaus are observed in numerous organisms—including Drosophila melanogaster—e.g. see the details in Why organisms show late-life mortality plateaus: a null model for comparing patterns of mortality.
It’s the humans that matter for us...
For you maybe. Those interested in biological senescence need a general theory that accounts for late life mortality deceleration. Attributing it to “data collection problems” fails to capture the phenomenon.