Bio‐mathematical approaches to the study of human variation in mortality

Abstract

The recent development of a number of biologically interpretable mathematical models of human mortality has facilitated the study of human variation in mortality patterns. This paper reviews the biological basis of these models, describes the models themselves, and presents the results of four anthropological applications of these models to the study of human variation in mortality. The models examined include a multi‐stage model of carcinogenesis, the Gompertz, Gompertz‐Makeham, and Siler models of the age patterns of total mortality, the fixed gamma distributed model of individual heterogeneity with respect to mortality, and a stochastic compartment model useful for studying the covariates of mortality. The examples presented include applications of: (1) the multi‐stage model to the study of colon cancer, (2) the fixed frailty gamma distributed model of heterogeneity to the black/white mortality crossover, and to a similar crossover identified in historical data, and (3) the Siler model to document and classify the international age patterns of mortality among contemporary nations and with several prehistoric and one contemporary anthropological population. Copyright © 1989 Wiley‐Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company