Self-organization of aging in a population approaching the steady state

The nonequilibrium asymptotic dynamics of a model for aging in a population of individuals initially having a random distribution of survival rates is studied. The model drives itself toward a steady state, and the average age tends toward a well-defined value. An analytic derivation shows that the average age of the members of the population decays in a power law fashion with the leading term of ordert ^–1. Monte Carlo simulations agree with the analytic work, and show that thet ^–1 decay is universally observed even when somatic mutations are introduced into the population.