Description: Introduction provides an overview to the monograph: measurement and history of the sex mortality differential, the differential in relation to various groupings, hypotheses, and expert opinions. From, Why Men Die Younger: Causes of Mortality Differences by Sex, M-LI01-1.

Description: The Society of Actuaries and two of its special interest sections, the Pension Section and the Health Section, set about creating a pension plan turnover table for use by actuaries to assist in calculating benefit costs for pension and retiree medical plans. This is the final report about that project.

Description: This discussion addresses the following questions about health insurance maternity benefits: 1. What has been the claim, lapse, and expense experience on hospital-medical policies with maternity benefits issued to young married couples? 2. To what extent have hospital-medical policies been introduced with reduced maternity benefits during the early policy years or with no maternity benefits? 3. What other measures are being used to provide maternity benefits on a self-sustaining basis? 4. Are these measures effective? From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1963, Vol. 15 Pt. 2

Description: This article provides a perspective on the SOA’s Aging and Retirement research reports, and on the types of research that are included. The SOA does a lot of research on different retirement topics, and many people are not aware of the scope of this work. This article offers an overview of the big picture as we think about the future. The article describes longer-term challenges to the US retirement system and recent developments that have affected the system and created uncertainty. It provides an overview of what individuals have said about retirement and their view of post-retirement risks and planning in a variety of consumer research studies. It then reviews some of the research and provides information on summary reports which provide insight on the findings from multiple related research reports. It also provides information about consumer education and what is currently available and in process. It then focuses on how the SOA is helping retirement professionals understand current and expected change and discusses areas of uncertainty as we help those we serve deal with change.

Description: This report highlights the findings of the 2009 survey and focuses on issues in the survey specifically as they relate to retirement concerns unique to women.

Description: Chapter 8 states that there is great difficulty in projecting future mortality levels - the changing sex mortality differential is only one of the uncertainties. Some widely varying opinions for the future are offered. From Why Men Die Younger: Causes of Mortality Differences by Sex, M-LI01-1.

Description: This paper uses data from two longitudinal surveys to examine the relationship between psychological well-being and financial well-being of older women and men, with specific interest in differences by marital status and duration of widowhood. The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study WLS provides a look at the consequences of relatively early widowhood. The Health and Retirement Study HRS has interviewed a representative sample of individuals 50 and older over the last two decades. We use the data from that survey to examine the adjustment to widowerhood over a larger age range, but with likely less precision to measure differences among women of a single age.

Description: Chapter 7 suggests that there are two general families of hypotheses about the sex mortality differential: constitutional - biologic/genetic, and external - social/cultural/environmental/behavioral. The author gives a thorough review of the literature and studies performed. The conclusion offered is that there are significant biological reasons for the differential, but that these are often masked by environmental factors. From Why Men Die Younger: Causes of Mortality Differences by Sex, M-LI01-1.

Description: Some of the methods used to measure the sex mortality differential are life expectancy, death rates at a given age, age-adjusted death rates, and average age at death. From Why Men Die Younger: Causes of Mortality Differences by Sex, M-LI01-1.

Description: This paper is the final report in a project commissioned by the Society of Actuaries Social Security Committee. The paper considers a variety of possible risk classification factors that could be used in estimating the value of any mortality based benefit for retirees. As many countries consider mandatory individual retirement accounts as their answer to a secure Social Security system, the question arises as to whether all workers can get true 'market value' annuities when they retire. It is clear today that private sector life annuities are priced assuming that the applicant is healthy-very healthy. Very little underwriting or risk classification now exists in the individual annuity marketplace. This paper reviews 45 recent research papers that look at factors that affect mortality after retirement. In particular, factors that seem to be important in predicting retirement mortality include: age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, income, occupation, marital status, religion, health behaviors, smoking, alcohol, and obesity. For each factor, this paper gives highlights relative to the named factor of the impact expected from that variable as described in the 45 reviewed research papers.