Description: A morbidity-mortality table, as conceived by Prof. A. H. Pollard, F.I.A. of Australia, is a multiple-decrement table akin to the familiar combined mortality and disability table - meant to improve demographers understanding of the influences on mortality.

Description: This is an editorial warning about the escalating costs of Medicare as outlined in the 1983 Annual Report of The Board of Trustees of The Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. The editorial ends with a question asking what the actuarial profession, and its members individually, ought to be doing that they aren’t already doing?

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: The 1977 introduction of Average Indexed Monthly Earnings into the U.S. Social Security benefit formula makes it necessary to seek new ways to estimate the Primary Insurance Amount - the author proposes a formula for this estimate.

Description: Structured-note annuities provide a retirement solution for the masses while allowing effective hedging and balance sheet usage for the insurance complex.

Description: The author notes: ‘as actuaries familiar with computers are thoroughly aware, the Halo notation the century-old life contingencies system we all learned as students has to be “linearized” strung out in a straight line for computer programming.’ This article describes a linearized notation that the author has used successfully for several years, for programming use only.

Description: According to the book 'The Limits to Growth' by Dennis L. Meadows et al., exponential population growth is the looming cause of five major trends of global concern- accelerating industrialization, increasing population pressure, rapid disappearance of unused arable land, depletion of non-renewable resources, and a deteriorating environment. Can disaster be avoided? The author of this article suggests that since actuaries are self-styled futurists, using our mathematical skills to define, analyze, and solve complex business and social problems, we should not be left behind on this one.

Description: This article is about the design and growth of the new variable life and annuity products.

Description: This article makes a case for implementation of a mortality fluctuation reserve in GAAP accounting.

Description: It is now almost 120 years since Makeham extended Gompertz’s efforts to find a simple mathematical law which would reflect the mortality experience of a group of lives and also simplify the calculation of monetary values. This article discusses a radically different approach, relating mortality improvements to economic condition, proposed by Kohler and Alcock in an article in the Journal of Peace Research, Vol XIII entitled Economic Law of Life.