Description: This is the second of three articles. The first April issue told how the 1973 Experience Table was constructed. Outlined here are two steps: i projecting the values in the 1973 Experience Table to produce the 1983 Basic Table, and ii reducing the 1983 Basic Table q's to arrive at the recommended annuity valuation table called the 1983 Table a.

Description: Summary of the Internal Revenue Service study on demographic and financial characteristics of the top wealthholders of the United States and a review of Metropolitan Life's mortality exerience for this group.

Description: Provides a brief review of World Population: An Analysis of Vital Data by N. Keyfitz and W. Flieger. It presented a collection of life tables and related data covering more than 60 populations over 180 years. This book presents data on mortality from recorded causes of death in 180 populations, with detail provided on age and sex .... This volume should reduce substantially problems of data availability by providing information on mortality experience spanning a period of 103 years, for 48 nations, and encompassing a range of life expectancies from 27 to 77. The data will assist the social scientist in documenting such matters as the sources of the vital revolution, causes of increasing sex mortality differentials, components of age curves of mortality, geographic and temporal variations in mortality structure, and economic and social costs of a disease.

Description: The article is an editorial on annuitant mortality over sixty years, 1923, 1943, 1963 and 1983.

Description: This article summarizes the 1967 Surgeon General’s report on the health consequences of smoking.

Description: Higlights from the 1977 volume of TSA Reports, including Standard Ordinary mortality ratios, an intercompany study of accidental death benefit experience, and reports from the committees on various lines of insurance.

Description: The author discusses arguments for the appropriate methods for determining exposure and mortality rates, quoting the actuarial literature back to 1898. From ‘The Actuary’ Volume 15, No. 3.

Description: The last of three articles on the 1983 Table a. The first two articles described the steps in contructing the 1973 Experience Table and the 1983 Table a. This article compares the reserves from the 1983 Table a to the 1971 IAM Table at various ages and by gender.

Description: This is about The Federal Register of October 18, 1982 announcement by the Veterans Administration concerning USGLI premiums. The premiums were based on the American Experience Mortality Table at 3 /2% interest which overestimates mortality and underestimates the interest rate. This article discusses the ramifications of this.

Description: This article discusses David Garrick Halmstad and his ten volumes from the Skandia Insurance Group's International Symposia on various medical impairments. While many of the papers in the volumes are of interest primarily to medical directors, there are some in each volume dealing with epidemiology and statistics that could be of interest to actuaries. As an example there are papers on alcohol consumption which are discussed in detail in this article.