Some Criteria for Aging

The concept of "aging," or progressive shortening of an entity's residual lifetime, is discussed in terms of the entity's survival time distribution. Quantities defined to describe the aging phenomenon include the "specific aging factor," "hazard rate," "hazard rate average," and "mean residual lifetime." A set of seven criteria for aging is established, based on these quantities, and a chain of implications among the criteria is developed. The hazard rate average and mean residual lifetime are noted as being particularly useful for empirical studies. An application of these two quantities is illustrated for a set of empirical survival time data.