Description: Presented at Living to 100 symposium, January 2011. Using data from Social Security's Death Master File, this study shows that mortality deceleration in humans observed at advanced ages may be an artifact caused by age exaggeration, data heterogeneity or use of improper estimates of hazard rate. The phenomenon of mortality deceleration at older ages vanishes for datasets of higher data quality.

Description: This article contains responses from five actuaries to a request for an explanation of how the 15% figure is calculated in the contention by unisex-pricing advocates that 15% of women live longer than men, but 100% of women are penalized.

Description: In this project the researchers explored the new opportunities provided by the ongoing revolution in information technology for studies of exceptional human longevity. Methodologies and interpretation of the results were presented.

Description: We describe our process of hand-curation of centenarian pedigrees and software that we developed for the automated construction of pedigrees.

Description: Actuaries have been indebted to the Statistical Bureau of the Metropolitan Life for studies in vital statistics associated with the names of Dublin, Lew and Spiegelman and a recent study by Quint and Cody is in this tradition. It is headed Preeminence and Mortality and was presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association last November. This article shares further perspectives about longevity, and the characteristics of people who experience long lives.

Description: This session at the SOA 2003 Vancouver Spring Meeting presents a study of the pattern of longevity and mortality improvement in Canada with comparisons to the U.S. and other countries. The data is based on a mortality study of Canadian pensioners.

Description: This article discusses the author’s reactions to the Living To 100 Symposium. He summarizes several sessions and concludes by saying his main takeaway from the symposium is that the debate continues as to whether there is a significant chance of finding a way, over the near- or medium-term, to slow the aging process.

Description: This paper addresses some of the issues arising from the combination of lower birth rates and increasing life expectancy, which have become more pronounced over the past 40 years in Canada and many other countries, too. The paper examines the effect of a gradual increase in retirement ages in order to attempt to maintain the “senior dependency ratio” at or close to its current level.

Description: This article discusses the sources of the information in the Social Security Death Master File and the potential utility of this information for demographic studies of centenarians and near-centenarians.

Description: The paper gives an overview of the data that are available and discusses the problems encountered in estimating mortality rates at old ages in the UK. It describes some of the methodologies used to construct mortality rates at advanced ages for official life tables and recent work undertaken by the UK Government Actuary’s Department to construct a database of historical mortality rates for the United Kingdom going back to 1961. Mortality tables for ages 85 and above are provided for years 1961 - 2000 by gender. Finally, possible methods for projecting mortality at advanced ages are discussed.