Description: An article from The Actuary that highlights the strategic importance of inter-company mortality studies. Broad-based mortality studies form the backbone of the life actuarial profession. However, few companies have sufficient exposure or deaths to construct their own mortality table. Even is some large companies have enough data, there is still a vast majority of companies that do not. Historically, the void has been filled by means of inter-company studies.

Description: a review of a paper by R. H. Daw, F.I.A. entitled “Smallpox and the Double Decrement Table: a piece of actuarial prehistory.”

Description: This article discusses David Garrick Halmstad and his ten volumes from the Skandia Insurance Group's International Symposia on various medical impairments. While many of the papers in the volumes are of interest primarily to medical directors, there are some in each volume dealing with epidemiology and statistics that could be of interest to actuaries. As an example there are papers on alcohol consumption which are discussed in detail in this article.

Description: This article is a book review of “Medical Risks: Patterns of Mortality and Survival,” by Richard B. Singer, MD, and Louis Levenson, FSA. The author of this review notes “monumental is an adjective one hears in reference to this book and it certainly seems apt both in regard to the tremendous amount of work in its preparation and, more importantly, its value to those to whom it is directed. The book contains a mine of information in the form of mortality indices relating to a large number of risk factors, mainly specific diseases, abnormal physical findings, or abnormal findings on medical tests.”

Description: The author discusses the first life table, or life table model, which was produced in 1662 by John Graunt in his Natural and Political Observations. He notes that the brief, crude table was both inaccurate and unrealistic, but nonetheless, proved to be the source of one of the most powerful concepts and valuable tools in demography and actuarial science.

Description: Review of a new text on mortality measurement, 'Mortality Table Construction' by Robert W. Batten.

Description: This article describes the activities and results of an SOA Task Force on Expansion of Mortality and Morbidity Statistics which was formed to review the mortality and morbidity research undertaken and the statistics published outside the recognized actuarial organizations.

Description: Provides a brief review of World Population: An Analysis of Vital Data by N. Keyfitz and W. Flieger. It presented a collection of life tables and related data covering more than 60 populations over 180 years. This book presents data on mortality from recorded causes of death in 180 populations, with detail provided on age and sex .... This volume should reduce substantially problems of data availability by providing information on mortality experience spanning a period of 103 years, for 48 nations, and encompassing a range of life expectancies from 27 to 77. The data will assist the social scientist in documenting such matters as the sources of the vital revolution, causes of increasing sex mortality differentials, components of age curves of mortality, geographic and temporal variations in mortality structure, and economic and social costs of a disease.

Description: Historically, male mortality rates were below those of females. However, that trend has been reversed within the last 100 to 150 years, causing revolutionary changes in the role of women. This subject was examined in a paper on “Mortality Trends of Males and Females Over the Ages” by Barnet N. Berin, George J. Stolnitz and Aaron Tenenbein, presented at the Centennial meeting.

Description: This article is an introduction to the topic of mortality projections and their impact on social security systems. The article reviews two life expectancy graphs and overall trends in life expectancy by gender at birth and age 65 in the United States, Canada and the UK.