In mortality forecasting work we often deal with downward trends.  It is often tempting to jump to the assumption of a linear trend, in part because this makes for easier mathematics.  However, real-world phenomena are rarely purely linear, and the late Iain Currie advocated linear adjustment as means of judging linear-seeming patterns.  This involves calculating a line between the first and last points, and deducting the line value at ea

Longevitas Ltd is pleased to announce the production release of v2.8.6 of the Projections Toolkit. This version contains powerful productivity and ease-of-use features including:

In my previous blog I showed how univariate stochastic mortality models, like the Lee-Carter and APC models, can be robustified to cope with data affected by the covid-19 pandemic.  Such robustification is necessary because outliers, such as the 2020 experience, bias parameter estimates and affect value-at-risk (VaR) capital requirements.  Kleinow & Richards (2016) showed how one-year VaR-style capital requirements are heavily de

The covid-19 pandemic led to high levels of mortality in many countries in 2020. Figure 1 shows that the number of deaths in England & Wales in 2020 was an outlier compared to preceding years.

Figure 1. Total deaths by calendar year for females in England & Wales. Source: HMD data, ages 50–105.

Longevitas Ltd is pleased to announce the production release of v2.8.5 of the Projections Toolkit. This version contains powerful productivity and ease-of-use features including:

Longevitas Ltd is pleased to announce the production release of v2.8.4 of the Projections Toolkit. This version contains powerful productivity and ease-of-use features including: