Description: Review of Fifty-Second Annual Report of the Board of Actuaries of the Civil Service Retirement System. The authors found it to be a concise well written report discussing a number of issues facing all pensions in an inflationary economy. Both the title and the dull format in the usual Government Printing Office style would seem to insure this document's instantaneous consignment to dead storage. However, behind the cover of this small pamphlet is a concise, well written report discussing-a-number of the issues facing not only federal pension programs at the present time, but all pensions in an inflationary economy. For example, several of the 11 pages devoted to the main report discuss the implications of static assumptions ignoring inflation as opposed to dynamic assumptions including inflation.

Description: The first in a series of articles exploring the improvement in retiree life expectancies and ways the improvement can be incorporated into actuarial estimates of annuity and pension plan reserves.

Description: Actuaries may soon be required to select assumptions that are individually reasonable when measuring pension obligations. This is the core meaning of a proposed amendment to the Actuarial Standard of Practice #4 in addition to the proposed ASOP on economic assumptions.

Description: The mathematical relationship between the interest rate and salary scale in pension valuations.

Description: Book review of The Fundamentals of Pension Mathematics by Barnet E. Barin. Mr. Griffin supports the text as a valuable contribution in particular his analysis of gains/losses by source during the transition to utilizing computers for pension valuation.

Description: The author delves into other important parts that should be in the scope of model validation besides the code.

Description: An increasingly popular tool in estate planning is the Joint Life policy payable upon the second death. The design and pricing of this policy is influenced significantly by cash value and reserve requirements. This article discusses two methods for calculating these values.