How does the risk of death change as we age?
After the first year of life, death rates continue to decline through childhood.
This chart visualizes annual death rates across age groups, using national data from the United States, which covers all births registered between 2018 and 2021.
The chart uses a log scale, which shows that the risk reduction during childhood is very dramatic. For example, during these years, a ten-year-old child’s risk of dying was almost fifty times lower than an infant’s.
In adolescence, however, death rates rise again suddenly, which looks like a hump.
As you can see, this is mainly due to a rise in deaths from external causes (shown in orange), which include accidents, falls, overdoses, poisonings, violence, suicides, and other injuries. Deaths from these causes then remain roughly stable until old age.
Research shows that the precise shape and timing of the hump varies between countries and changes over time. However, the total death rate continues to rise across adulthood due to increased deaths from diseases.
You can see that the rise becomes exponential — for example, 80-year-olds are around ten times more likely to die than 60-year-olds.
As we age, our cells get damaged by injury, stress, and DNA mutations. Because of this, our organs deteriorate. This makes us more vulnerable to additional damage, and our body becomes less able to repair itself.
Research suggests that this leads to an exponentially growing risk of developing many diseases — including cancers, cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, dementias, and others — which increase death rates overall.
ALT Age-specific mortality in the US, broken down by diseases and external causes, using data from the CDC Wonder between 2018 and 2021. Chart CC BY Our World in Data