Mortality of Supercentenarians: Does It Grow with Age?

Natalia S. Gavrilova, University of Chicago
Leonid A. Gavrilov, University of Chicago

It is believed that mortality of supercentenarians (persons aged 110 years and more) does not grow with age (Gampe, 2010). We estimated age-specific hazard rates for over 600 supercentenarians recorded in the International Database on Longevity (IDL) using standard approach available in Stata package. We found that hazard rates continue to grow after age 110 years with no signs of deceleration. We compared the performance of two competing models – the Gompertz model and the logistic (Kannisto) model using data for younger (1885-1895) and older (before 1885) birth cohorts of supercentenarians. In all studied groups, the Gompertz model fits mortality data better than the ‘mortality deceleration’ Kannisto model (according to the Akaike information criterion as the goodness-of-fit measure). Gompertz slope parameter for supercentenarians does not differ significantly from slope estimates at ages 20-80 years. These results suggest that human mortality at very advanced ages continues to follow the Gompertz law.