Justifying the Gompertz curve of mortality via the generalized Polya process of shocks

Abstract

A new probabilistic model of aging that can be applied to organisms is suggested and analyzed. Organisms are subject to shocks that follow the generalized Polya process (GPP), which has been recently introduced and characterized in the literature. Distinct from the nonhomogeneous Poisson process that has been widely used in applications, the important feature of this process is the dependence of its future behavior on the number of previous events (shocks). The corresponding survival and the mortality rate functions are derived and analyzed. The general approach is used for justification of the Gompertz law of human mortality. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.