Explaining mortality rate plateaus.

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.