I was recently read­ing about super­cente­nar­i­ans–peo­ple that have lived to the age of 110 or above–and read the fol­low­ing statistic:

[Reach­ing] the age of 110 years [is] some­thing achieved by only one in a thou­sand cen­te­nar­i­ans (based on Euro­pean data). Fur­ther­more, only 1 in 50 super­cente­nar­i­ans lives to be 115 (1 in 50,000 centenarians).

Fas­ci­nated by this expo­nen­tial increase in death rates, I recalled read­ing about the Gompertz–Makeham law of mor­tal­ity, and how the prob­a­bil­ity of dying dou­bles fairly evenly every eight years.

What do you think are the odds that you will die dur­ing the next year? Try to put a num­ber to it — 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? What­ever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now.

This star­tling fact was first noticed by the British actu­ary Ben­jamin Gom­pertz in 1825 and is now called the “Gom­pertz Law of human mor­tal­ity.” Your prob­a­bil­ity of dying dur­ing a given year dou­bles every 8 years. For me, a 25-year-old Amer­i­can, the prob­a­bil­ity of dying dur­ing the next year is a fairly minis­cule 0.03% — about 1 in 3,000. When I’m 33 it will be about 1 in 1,500, when I’m 42 it will be about 1 in 750, and so on. By the time I reach age 100 (and I do plan on it) the prob­a­bil­ity of liv­ing to 101 will only be about 50%.

via Kot­tke