Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper examines the trends of mortality improvement in the United States for the consideration of the task force set up in 2010 to review the life tables for Group Annuity and the related assumptions for mortality improvement 'Scale AA', using more recent information from the Social Security Administration life tables and data derived from the Human Mortality Database.

Description: In an increasing population the number of persons falls off from age to age more rapidly than does the stationary population of the life table. This can introduce a systematic bias into life table calculations. The first part of the paper describes an iterative procedure to correct for the bias, extends the method to multiple decrement and associated single decrement life tables, and demonstrates the magnitude of the bias involved. The second part of the paper summarizes the results of applying iterative life table techniques to 165 populations which encompass over a century's experience and include countries from all parts of the world. Followed by discussions submitted by several people