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.

Description: This paper discusses the key forces likely to influence U.K. mortality in the 21st century, and describes the methodology and assumptions used in the latest projections of U.K. mortality. The paper also describes recent tables of mortality rates published by the Continuous Mortality Investigation, based on the experience of people taking out insurance contracts and the approaches taken to projecting these.