TY - JOUR A1 - Wrycza, Tomasz A1 - Baudisch, Annette T1 - The pace of aging: Intrinsic time scales in demography Y1 - 2014/05/20 JF - Demographic Research JO - Demographic Research SN - 1435-9871 SP - 1571 EP - 1590 DO - 10.4054/DemRes.2014.30.57 VL - 30 IS - 57 UR - https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol30/57/ L1 - https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol30/57/30-57.pdf L2 - https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol30/57/30-57.pdf N2 - Background: The pace of aging is a concept that captures the time-related aspect of aging. It formalizes the idea of a characteristic life span or intrinsic population time scale. In the rapidly developing field of comparative biodemography, measures that account for inter-species differences in life span are needed to compare how species age. Objective: We aim to provide a mathematical foundation for the concept of pace. We derive desired mathematical properties of pace measures and suggest candidates which satisfy these properties. Subsequently, we introduce the concept of pace-standardization, which reveals differences in demographic quantities that are not due to pace. Examples and consequences are discussed. Conclusions: Mean life span (i.e., life expectancy from birth or from maturity) is intuitively appealing, theoretically justified, and the most appropriate measure of pace. Pace-standardization provides a serviceable method for comparative aging studies to explore differences in demographic patterns of aging across species, and it may considerably alter conclusions about the strength of aging. ER -