What happens when we age

Our risk of dying sharply increases

As we age, we accumulate illnesses and our body's ability to regenerate decreases. One way to measure of ageing is the our risk of dying within a given year. When we are young, our risk of dying within a given year is very low: a 20-year-old person in Germany has a 0.03% risk of dying before the age of 21. From the age of 30, however, this risk doubles approximately every 8 years.

This means that while our risk of dying within the year is still 0.04% at 30, it increases to 0.1% at 40 and 0.26% at 50. At the age of 60, the risk is already 0.75%, at 70 it has risen to 1.84% and at 80 the probability of dying within a year is already 4.71%. For 90-year-olds, the probability of not living to see their next birthday is 17%. A centenarian has almost the same probability of dying within a day as a 40-year-old within a year.

Most of us die of age-related diseases

The top cause of death in developed countries is age-related disease. In Germany, for example, approximately one million people died in 2024. More than a third of these (33.7% or 339,212 people) died from cardiovascular disease. A further 23.7% (or 230,392 people) died of cancer, while 6.1% of deaths (61,927 people) were the result of dementia. In total, 779,564 people died from diseases of old age, which corresponds to 77% of all deaths registered that year. Elderly people are also more likely to experience worse symptoms and die from infectious diseases like COVID-19.