One rate of aging for all individuals? Statistical evidence from cause-of-death data

Trifon I. Missov, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Filipe Ribeiro, Universidade de Évora

Vaupel's hypothesis (Vaupel 2010, Nature) suggests that the individual rate of aging, defined as the relative derivative of the baseline hazard of death, might be constant for every species. We test this hypothesis on human mortality data by estimating the rates of aging by cause of death.