ScholarGate
Get started

Method evidence record

Gompertz-Makeham Law of Mortality

The Gompertz-Makeham law is the foundational parametric model of adult human mortality. Benjamin Gompertz showed in 1825 that the force of mortality rises exponentially with age, and William Makeham added an age-independent background term in 1860 to account for deaths from causes unrelated to ageing. The combined law expresses the hazard of death as a constant plus an exponentially increasing component, capturing the dominant shape of adult mortality with just three parameters.

Evidence statusSources recorded, not reviewedBibliographic sources are present. Claim-level evidence review has not been performed.

Source record

Recorded

Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.

Gompertz-Makeham Law of Mortality

Taxonomic method recordregression-modeldemography

  1. Gompertz, B. (1825). On the nature of the function expressive of the law of human mortality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 115, 513–583. · DOI 10.1098/rstl.1825.0026

  2. Makeham, W. M. (1860). On the law of mortality and the construction of annuity tables. Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 8(6), 301–310. · DOI 10.1017/S204616580000126X

Open full method2 recorded citations, copied from the method source record.

Curated claims

Assessed

Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.

No curated claims yet

This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.

Related methods

Suggested4

Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations. No evidence claim is inferred.