Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. This session analyzes the factors that influence the mortality differences between countries and between population and insured-lives mortality.

Description: This paper suggests that two opposing pressures are at work in the United States. One is the limit to the number of retired adults that the nation can support. The other is the growing diversity of needs and desires of older people and employers. These two opposing pressures will frame the issues of the future.

Description: This paper examines the problem of a growing net benefit reduction for working women who are entitled to benefits in their own right, as well as to benefits as surviving spouses of covered workers.

Description: Discussion of Symposium Session 3B. Papers presented: Living to 100 - A Women's Issue Evaluation of Approaches to Reducing Women's Longevity Risk Estimates of Incidence, Prevalence, Duration, Intensity, and Cost of Chronic Disability among the US Elderly

Description: A detailed statistical analysis of mortality improvement for the Canadian population and for the Canadian insured lives conducted by the Institute for Quantitative Finance and Insurance.

Description: Discussion on Living to 100 Session 4B. Papers presented: Typology and Review of Measures of Human Aging, Longevity and Superlongevity with Applications to US Data and Some Implications for US Public Programs and, Mortality Measurements at Advanced Ages: A Study of the Social Security Master Death File

Description: The effect on mortality of the reduction in smoking and the increase obesity in the U.S. is estimated based on historical and projected patterns.

Description: The Human Mortality Database is a unique collection of detailed mortality and population data with complete and reliable vital registration and census data.

Description: The influenza pandemic of 1918-20 is recognized as having generally taken place in three waves, starting in the northern spring and summer of 1918. This pattern of three waves, however, was not universal: in some locations influenza seems to have persisted into or returned in 1920. The recorded statistics of influenza morbidity and mortality are likely to be a significant understatement. Limitations of these data can include nonregistration, missing records, misdiagnosis, and nonmedical certification, and may also vary greatly between locations. Further research has seen the consistent upward revision of the estimated global mortality of the pandemic, which a 1920s calculation put in the vicinity of 21.5 million. A 1991 paper revised the mortality as being in the range 24.7-39.3 million. This paper suggests that it was of the order of 50 million. However, it must be acknowledged that even this vast figure may be substantially lower than the real toll, perhaps as much as 100 percent understated.

Description: This article describes techniques and models used to forecast mortality improvement and the considerations that underlie long-term mortality improvement projections in the United States.