http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_Worktable310.pdf gives death counts, USA, year 2007, at each age 0-120. The file http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_WorkTable210R.pdf gives death rates in each 5-year age group, USA, year 2007. Also broken down by race, sex, and into 113 popular causes of death. Now I will try to give the all-races, all-sexes, all-causes year-2007 death rates from that file and also http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK7_2007.pdf for below 1 year old: age rate/100K/yr ln(rate) 0-1 675.1 6.51 1-4 28.6 3.35 5-9 13.7 2.62 healthiest age; monotonic increase from here on: 10-14 16.9 2.83 15-19 61.9 4.13 20-24 98.3 4.59 25-29 99.4 4.60 30-34 110.8 4.71 35-39 145.8 4.98 40-44 221.6 5.40 45-49 340.0 5.83 50-54 509.0 6.23 55-59 726.3 6.59 60-64 1068.3 6.97 65-69 1627.5 7.39 70-74 2491.3 7.82 75-79 3945.9 8.28 80-84 6381.4 8.76 85-199 12946.5 9.47 I attempted to draw a graph of this data, and the line ln(DeathRate)=(31/375)*Age+1.856 happens to agree with the data pretty well for ages 5-14 and 30-84. This confirms "Gompertz's law." I believe it also works well at ages 85-95. However, it does not work at ages <5 and 15-29. Perhaps you can produce better laws. I suspect ages 20-95 could be fit well by DeathRate = A + exp(B*age+C), which I think is called Gompertz-Makeham law. Also, I think there are papers out there about very old people's death rates perhaps also deviating from Gompertz law (ages>95), but the CDC does not seem to provide that data. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step)