It would be interesting to obtain data on infant deaths rates month by month throughout the first year of life. But I do not have it. I did manage to extend the CDC mortality rate table up past age 85 (ignoring the 201 death of unknown age seems to introduce safely neglectible error) using their death counts in year 2007. 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 85-89 10067.3 9.22 90-94 13553.3 9.51 95-99 16539.7 9.71 100-104 18356.8 9.82 105-109 19236.5 9.86 110-114 19354.8 9.87 Fewer than 1 in a million American deaths are at ages>114. Gompertz's law indeed works well for ages 30-95, but if you manage to reach age 100 (achieved by fewer than 1% of American 2007 deaths) the death rate then seems to stop its exponential increase and become almost constant from then on. [ln(DeathRate) keeps increasing, but more slowly.] I have absolutely no idea why. The following formula apparently fits the 2007 USA death rate (per 100K per year) as a function of integer age x in years, to within a factor of 1.55 [equivalently maximum additive |error|<0.44 for fitting ln(DeathRate)] at every integer age 1-99: DeathRate = C/x + Q + exp(A*x+B) where A=0.0782, B=2.527, C=21.152, Q=-7.813. I have not attempted also to fit it for ages 100-115. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step)