Preliminary 2014-2020 Public Pension Mortality Study Data Request

The Society of Actuaries’ (SOA) Retirement Plans Experience Committee (RPEC) is planning to initiate an update to the Pub-2010 Mortality Tables, which were released in January 2019 and included data from years 2008 through 2013. In accordance with the goal of providing regular updates to these mortality tables, RPEC will soon be releasing a data request for mortality experience for members of public pension plans. The request is expected to be released in mid-August, with the data collection period running through mid-November. The study is expected to cover the years 2014 through 2020; public pension systems are encouraged to provide data from as many years as possible within that time frame.

The purpose of this announcement is to provide advance notice of the forthcoming request to give potential contributors additional time to consider participation. This will also allow for extra planning time to gather and submit data. A draft version of the data request has been posted below under “Materials”. For each plan for which data will be provided, contributors should submit:

• Completed Plan-Level Data Elements worksheet, which is a questionnaire about plan characteristics
• Anonymized member census files in accordance with one of two layouts:
  • Layout 1: One record per member for the entirety of the study period, including annual updates of member status, salary (for actives) and pension amount (for annuitants)
  • Layout 2: Up to eight annual snapshots of census data (depending on the number of years submitted) with an anonymized unique identifier for members that will allow information from different years to be linked across the study period.

Materials

Preliminary 2014-2020 Public Pension Mortality Study Data Request

Questions Or Comments?

If you have any questions, please contact Patrick Nolan, SOA Experience Studies Actuary, at pnolan@soa.org or +1-847-273-8860.