The compensation law of mortality (or late-life mortality convergence) states that the relative differences in

death rate Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of d ...

s between different populations of the same biological species decrease with age, because the higher initial death rates in disadvantaged populations are ''compensated'' by lower pace of mortality increase with age. The age at which this imaginary (extrapolated) convergence of mortality trajectories takes place is named the "species-specific life span" (see Gavrilov and Gavrilova, 1979). For human beings, this human species-specific life span is close to 95 years (Gavrilov and Gavrilova, 1979; 1991). Compensation law of mortality is a paradoxical empirical observation, and it represents a challenge for methods of

survival analysis Survival analysis is a branch of statistics for analyzing the expected duration of time until one event occurs, such as death in biological organisms and failure in mechanical systems. This topic is called reliability theory, reliability analysis ...

based on proportionality assumption (proportional hazard models). The compensation law of mortality also represents a great challenge for many theories of

aging Ageing (or aging in American English) is the process of becoming Old age, older until death. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi; whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentiall ...

and mortality, which usually fail to explain this phenomenon. On the other hand, the compensation law follows directly from

reliability theory Reliability engineering is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes the ability of equipment to function without failure. Reliability is defined as the probability that a product, system, or service will perform its intended funct ...

, when the compared systems have different initial levels of redundancy.

References

* Gavrilov LA, Gavrilova NS.
Reliability Theory of Aging and Longevity.
In: Masoro E.J. & Austad S.N.. (eds.): ''Handbook of the Biology of Aging'', Sixth Edition. Academic Press. San Diego, CA, USA, 2006, 3-42. * Gavrilov LA, Gavrilova NS. ''Why We Fall Apart. Engineering's Reliability Theory Explains Human Aging''.

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...

, 2004, 41(9): 30–35. * Gavrilov L.A., Gavrilova N.S. "The quest for a general theory of aging and longevity". Science's ''SAGE KE'' (''Science of Aging Knowledge Environment'') for 16 July 2003; Vol. 2003, No. 28, 1–10. https://www.science.org/loi/sageke, * Gavrilov L.A., Gavrilova N.S
The reliability theory of aging and longevity
''Journal of Theoretical Biology'', 2001, 213(4): 527–545. * Leonid A. Gavrilov & Natalia S. Gavrilova (1991), ''The Biology of Life Span: A Quantitative Approach''. New York: Harwood Academic Publisher, * Gavrilov, L.A., Gavrilova, N.S. "Determination of species length of life". ''

Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR The ''Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences'' (, ''Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR'' (''DAN SSSR''), ) was a Soviet journal that was dedicated to publishing original, academic research papers in physics, mathematics, chemistry, geology, and biol ...

'', 1979, 246(2): 465–469. English translation by Plenum Publ Corp: pp. 905–908. * Gavrilov, L.A. "A mathematical model of the aging of animals". ''Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR'', 1978, 238(2): 490–492. English translation by Plenum Publ Corp: pp. 53–55. * Gavrilov, L.A., Gavrilova, N.S., Yaguzhinsky, L.S. "The main regularities of animal aging and death viewed in terms of reliability theory". ''J. General Biology'' 'Zhurnal Obschey Biologii'' 1978, 39(5): 734–742. {{Death Population Senescence

See also

References