Description: This session is about recent population experience, likely causes, probable future prospects, Industry mortality differentials and trends by product line,market and type of underwriting, What statistically credible evidence do we have for the efficacy of life insurance underwriting practices, What does the new Intercompany Standard Issues study show and Are there sound biological laws of mortality. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 5, No. 4.

Description: This report was presented at the October 1982 Society of Actuaries annual Meeting in Washington D.C.. It presented supplementary information on the 1979 Build and Blood Pressure Study. This supplementary study was made to answer a number of specific questions raised by medical directors and actuaries of life insurance companies as well as by some prominent physicians and research scientists.

Description: This 1978 SOA session presented some provisional findings of the new Build and Blood Pressure Study. Some of the findings: 1. The average weights of men in the new study exceed the corresponding weights in the previous 1959 study by 2 to 8 pounds in the thirties, and by up to 5 pounds in the fifties. 2. The mortality ratios of overweight men are not significantly different in the new study from those in the 1959 study. 3. Markedly overweight men experienced lower mortality in the current study than in the 1959 study. 4. Men weighing 20 percent below average recorded 10 to 15 percent higher mortality in the new study than in the 1959 study. 5. Mortality of overweight women is relatively lower than that of overweight men. 6. Mortality of men with elevated systolic and diastolic pressures was appreciably lower than in the 1959 study. 7. Mortality of women with moderately elevated systolic and diastolic pressures was not significantly different from that in the 1959 study. 8. The presence of minor impairments alongside of blood pressures in excess of 150/90 usually produced significant increases in mortality.

Description: This discussion covers an update on mortality research. Specifically, it highlights the long term conditional survival of cancer patients, recent trends in the mortality of the aged, parametric models for life insurance mortality data, and shares an exposure draft of the derivation of the 1983 table A for individual annuity valuation. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1981, Volume 7, No. 4.