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Posts feedOccupational hazard
We previously considered Sir Michael Marmot's landmark Whitehall Studies, which looked at health and mortality outcomes for UK civil servants. Sir Michael continues to research UK mortality, and has recently been drawing attention to the fact that improvements in UK life expectancy appear to be slowing down.
Everything points to Poisson
One recurring theme in our forthcoming book, Modelling Mortality with Actuarial Applications, is the all-pervading role of likelihoods that suggest the lurking presence of a Poisson distribution. A popular assumption in modelling hazard rates is that the number of deaths observed at any given age is a Poisson random variable, so perhaps that might explain it?
Mortality by the book
Our book, Modelling Mortality with Actuarial Applications, will appear in Spring 2018. I wrote the second of the three parts, where I describe the modelling and forecasting of aggregate mortality data, such as provided by the Office for National Statistics, the Human Mortality Database or indeed by any insurer whose own data is suitable.
Risk transfer...and transfer risk
The risk-transfer market for defined-benefit pensions in the UK has been buoyant for many years. There is considerable demand from pension schemes — to say nothing of their sponsoring employers — for solutions that transfer risks to insurers.
Age rating
Back in the days before personal computers, actuaries relied solely on published tables for their calculations. These were not just the mortality tables, but monetary functions of these tables known as commutation factors. My old student tables from 1980 list commutation and other factors at discount rates of 4%, 6% and 8% (the latter rate seems almost comically high by current standards).
Priority clearance
We previously discussed the clearance of senescent cells as a plausible treatment for multiple diseases of aging. The theory goes that senescent cells drive systemic inflammation, and that this inflammation underlies aging pathology.
How much data do you need?
There are two common scenarios when an actuary has to come up with a mortality basis for pensioners or annuitants.
Of mice and (space)men
It may seem obvious, but when encountering longevity research, it bears repeating: human biology is not mouse biology. For this reason, one of my resolutions for 2017 was to minimise blogs centered around rodents.
Twin peaks
If you are over forty, the title of this blog will call to mind an iconic, sometimes disturbing, television series of the same name from 1990. If you clicked on the link expecting murder, surreal horror and an undercurrent of sleaze, however, then this posting is as far away from all that as you are ever likely to get.
Fifty years of mortality improvements
In an earlier post we looked at the development of the distribution of age at death over time. We saw how the peak adult age at death had continuously moved towards an ever-higher age.