Description: The projection of future mortality experience constitutes a challenge for both actuaries and demographers. As we show, some of the currently used standard mortality projections have several shortcomings which might pose a serious threat to insurers, pension funds, and social security systems. In this paper, we propose a new projection methodology which overcomes these shortcomings. We introduce a model which allows mortality improvements to depend on age, period, and cohort, and we explain how the model can be estimated and applied. In particular, we show how coherent projections for several populations, i.e. males and females of the same country and populations from closely related countries, can be derived. The basis for these projections are coherent extrapolations of historical life expectancies. As aggregated mortality statistics, life expectancies typically exhibit steady patterns which often makes forecasting rather obvious. We observe that the incorporation of information on the mortality experience of other populations can have a significant impact on the projection for a given population. A comparison with other commonly used projection models shows that our methodology provides stable and highly plausible projections. Finally, we discuss uncertainties in our projection approach and explain how they can be accounted for. In order to illustrate our methodology, we derive fully specified projections for German males and females as members of a large reference set of European populations.

Description: Longevity risk—the risk of outliving one’s retirement savings—is probably the greatest risk facing current and future retirees in the United States. As life expectancy increases, government programs, private pensions and various financial products will all be needed to provide retirement income over ever-longer periods of retirement. This article focuses on the optimal mix of social insurance, pensions and financial products that should be used to provide retirement income to the oldest old, here defined as those 90 and older. To be sure, Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are already designed to provide modest, inflation-adjusted retirement benefits to all retirees. On the other hand, pensions and other forms of retirement savings are often dissipated long before people reach the esteemed status of oldest old. One approach for enhancing the retirement incomes of the oldest old would be to expand Social Se curity and SSI. Another approach would be to strengthen the protections provided by pensions and other forms of retirement savings. In particular, the private sector could be encouraged to sell more annuities and other lifetime income products, and, perhaps, the government should also get into the business of selling annuities. These are the kinds of solutions needed to ensure the oldest old face their final years with adequate economic resources.

Description: This is the A Study into the Impact of Pre-Programmed Health Risks in Retirement Planning paper authored by N. V. Subramanyan for Session 1B of the January 13-15, 2020 Living to 100 Symposium in Orlando, Florida.

Description: This is the abstract for the paper, The Boomers Are Coming: A Total Cost of Care Model of the Impact of Population Aging on the Cost of Chronic and Acute Conditions in the United States. The complete paper is not available online.

Description: List of Figures. From A Comparative Analysis of Methods of Health Risk Assessment, M-HB96-1.

Description: Over the last century, the assumption usually made was that causes of death are independent, although it is well-known that dependencies exist. Recent developments in econometrics allow, through Vector Error Correction Models (VECM), to model multivariate dynamic systems including time dependency between economic variables. Common trends that exist between the variables may then be highlighted, the relation between these variables being represented by a long-run equilibrium relationship. In this work, VECM are developed for causes-of-death mortality. We analyze the five main causes of death across ten major countries representing a diversity of developed economies. The World Health Organization website provides cause-of-death information over about the last 60 years. Our analysis reveals that long-run equilibrium relationships exist between the five main causes of death, improving our understanding of the nature of dependence between these com peting risks over recent years. It also highlights that countries had usually different past experience in regards to cause-of-death mortality trends and thus, applying results from one country to another may be misleading.

Description: It is believed that exponential growth of mortality with age (Gompertz law) is followed by a period of deceleration, with slower rates of mortality increase at older ages. We compared the performance (goodness-of-fit) of two competing models-the Gompertz model and the logistic (Kannisto) model using data for 22 birth cohorts of U.S. men and women in the age interval 80-105 years. In all cases the Gompertz model fits mortality data significantly better than the Kannisto model. Another approach to study mortality patterns at advanced ages is based on Life table Aging Rate (LAR). It was found that for all studied 24 single-year birth cohorts LAR does not change significantly with age in the age interval 80-100 years suggesting the validity of Gompertz law. These results suggest that mortality deceleration at advanced ages is not a universal phenomenon, and human survival follows the Gompertz law up to very old ages.

Description: The CBD Mortality Indexes: Modeling and Applications

Description: This is the Chronic Diseases and Longevity Risk: An Application to Type II Diabetes Insurancce Products paper authored by Hsin-Chung Wang, Jack C. Yue and Ting-Chung Chang for Session 6B of the January 13-15, 2020 Living to 100 Symposium in Orlando, Florida.