Description: This paper by Harry M. Sarason, presented at the Eastern Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held March 24-25, 1960 in Washington, D.C., and the ensuing discussion, considers how to dispel, in layman’s terms, the misconception that “an annuity for the expectation of life is the same as the average value of the life annuity.” From the 1960 Transactions Vol. 12, No. 33.

Description: This paper demonstrates and quantifies death-rate differences by marital status, explores the reasons why mortality rates for the unmarried exceed those for the married, and encourages actuaries and others to contribute their thoughts on these perplexing matters. From the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1994, Vol. 46.

Description: This paper presents a procedure for analyzing the factors that affect federal Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance costs in the U.S. This procedure shows that the tripling of the program costs during the last 30 years resulted from increases in the number of beneficiaries as opposed to increases in the number of covered workers. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1986, Vol. 38.

Description: This abstract introduces the paper that demonstrates that marital status has as much influence on rates of human mortality as the better known factors of gender and smoking habits. The validity of various explanations is examined.

Description: This paper discusses Cecil Nesbitt's paper on elementary models of the reserve fund for OASDI in the United States. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, Vol.1.

Description: This panel discussed studies of the risk of loss due to changes in the interest rate environment. It addressed why the C-3 risk is important and how inflation and stability in interest rates can affect the financial soundness of life insurance companies. There was also a discussion of the theoretical work being carried out to calibrate the C-3 risk of variation in interest rates and to what extent the valuation actuary can properly recognize the risk of loss from changes in the interest rate environment within the framework of valuations laws and regulations.

Description: This paper attempts, in some measure, to get at least the fundamentals of pension funding into actuarial literature. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1952, Vol. 4, No. 8.

Description: The game of baseball has characteristics that suggest its analysis as a Markov chain.

Description: This paper was presented at the 1955 Society of Actuaries Eastern Spring Meeting, held March 24-25 in New York City. Noting that traditionally, group life insurance has been financed on a yearly renewable term basis, the author discusses the reasons for development of group permanent life insurance and the different funding methods. The author also presents certain analogies with the funding of pension plans, and discusses employee taxability issues under current tax law for the various funding methods. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1955 Volume 7, Number 18.

Description: An extension of a paper published in the 1952 Transactions by the same author, describing and classifying various funding methods for defined benefit pension plans. Followed by discussion papers submitted by several authors.