Description: This paper examines the effects of selection procedures used in epidemiologic studies and suggests that similar procedures could be employed to select standard ordinary insurance risks at the older ages. The experience in this paper was developed from a prospective epidemiologic investigation launched by the American Cancer Society in the fall of 1959 to learn how personal characteristics, living styles, and environmental conditions influence health and longevity.

Description: Abstract: The percentage of the population who are obese has grown dramatically worldwide over the last several decades, although stabilizing recently in the United States. Studies have found the effects on mortality to be inconsistent and controversial because of methodological differences and the complexity of the relationship between obesity and mortality. This paper discusses this relationship and sheds light on the likely effects of this epidemic. Issues associated with the so-called obesity-mortality paradox, where mortality experience is lower for those individuals who are overweight and in some who are obese compared with the mortality of those in the normal weight category, are examined. Although certain recently reported studies of the relationship between mortality and obesity indicate that obesity is related to a reduced percent of additional mortality, this may in part be due to the shorter average time that those currently obese have been exposed to their condition. Nevertheless, the amount of health care costs and rates of disability associated with being obese are significant, contributing to the increase in overall health care costs as they become more numerous and age. Although obesity is being addressed with a great deal of activity and publicity, they will continue to prove challenging for individuals and society to manage and overcome.

Description: Discussion of the Society of Actuaries Report on Mortality Improvement Survey from March 2003 survey from the summer of 2000

Description: Effective risk management of a portfolio demands accurate and succinct models which explain the main risk factors. We look at the various requirements we demand of a model, and find that they can all be met with an import from medical statistics: survival models.

Description: This article examines the impact of a changing smoking rate on population-level mortality improvement and the importance of taking this driver into account.

Description: This paper describes risk-factor-dependent multiple decrements and actuarial cost functions as a general compartment model, a discrete time and discrete state stochastic model of morbidity and mortality processes. For large numbers of risk factors, the model is extended to its natural continuous time and state form. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1991, Vol. 43.

Description: Centenarians persons living to age 100 and over represent a population that could be useful in identifying factors leading to long life and avoidance of fatal diseases. This study explores whether people living to 100 and beyond were any different from their peers at their middle age 30 years in terms of their physical characteristics height and body build, occupation and marital status.

Description: Today, a plethora of tools and approaches exist to develop lifetime projections of long-term care (LTC) business. Within these tools lie two distinct approaches to project mortality; namely, by using assumptions that are applied: (1) to an all-lives exposure base, or (2) separately for disabled- versus active-lives exposure bases. Using disabled versus active mortality allows for more granular modeling of the two different cohorts that exhibit dramatically different mortality. And so, when using an all-lives mortality assumption, is the projection missing important details about the appropriate mortality level? This article seeks to not only answer this question, but also answer how a “traditional” all-lives mortality assumption can be impacted when you introduce a combination of the two modeling techniques into the development of a mortality assumption. To answer these questions, we examined the experience and results developed from one c ompany as an illustrative case study.

Description: This paper will investigate the problem in estimating mortality rates using data obtained from insurance company records.

Description: This study covers all standard regular Ordinary issues of 1919 through 1951 exposed between 1948 and 1952 anniversaries, issued by the Prudential Insurance Company. There is a comparison of male to female mortality.