Description: Understanding the true drivers of human behavior is essential if we are to capitalize on opportunities offered in a new era of personalized persuasion.

Description: Article from The Actuary, May 1971 – volume 5 - Issue 5 is a book review of Jay W. Forrester's Urban Dynamics which presents a mathematical model of a city and uses it to study the effects of various urban improvement programs.

Description: This article provides an overview of behavioral economic theory as it relates to health and welfare insurance plans and provides summaries of two sample applications of the theories: enrollment in health insurance exchanges created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and product design considerations in light of vast health illiteracy.

Description: We discussed impacts of procrastination and strategies to harness the power of inertia to aid individuals in their pursuit of future financial well-being.

Description: In the United States, things were never the same after a universal credit card, good for everything private and public, was adopted. It was agreed to use the Social Security number. Once put into effect, there were strange developments. This is satire.

Description: The article discusses the sustainability of the ACA individual market from a public entitlement standpoint. A key point of measuring sustainability is the reliance on market forces rather than federal budget constraints. The article explains why an actuarial viewpoint of sustainability is necessary to a greater extent than other public assistance and social insurance programs. The article challenges actuaries to be a bold, objective voice in a space that is full of opinionated but often uninformed viewpoints.

Description: This article highlights the paper presented by Eric Short, F.I.A., actuary and journalist with the London Financial Times, presented to the Students Society of the Institute earlier this year. His conclusion was bleak he quoted from Hagel: What experience and history teach us is that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it.

Description: Description of the vast variety of predictive analytics topics covered by the Forecasting & Futurism section and introduction to the July 2015 issue of the newsletter.

Description: This table is an analysis of engagement among adults age 55 and older by health status. Engagement is defined as time spent in paid work, formal volunteering informal volunteering and caregiving activities.

Description: Risk management techniques do not include system science. System science requires that the uncertainty of the world is incorporated into the results. The articles explains the difference between risk and uncertainty. Learn how risk practices create an overoptimistic view of future outcomes.