The vulnerability of aging states: A survival analysis across premodern societies
Marten Scheffer, Egbert H. van Nes, Luke Kemp, Timothy A. Kohler, Timothy M. Lenton,  and Chi Xu

PNAS 120 (48) e2218834120

Humans become increasingly fragile as they age. We show that something similar may happen to states, although for states, the risk of termination levels off as they grow older, allowing some to persist for millennia. Proximate causes of their demise such as conquest, coups, earthquakes, and droughts are easy to spot and have received significant attention. However, our results suggest that unraveling what shapes resilience to such events is equally important if we are to understand state longevity and collapse. Risk of termination rises over the first 200 y, inviting a search for mechanisms that can undermine resilience at this timescale.

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