Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T11:19:41.679Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On the Inadequacy of existing Data for determining the Rate of Mortality among Select Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

William Spens Esq.*
Affiliation:
Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Society

Extract

I. While so much improvement has recently taken place in the arrangement and construction of various tables for facilitating calculations founded on existing data, very little has been done in the way of investigating and correcting the data themselves; and it is feared that the question of the rate of mortality among select lives is still involved in the greatest doubt and obscurity.

II. It is not proposed in the present paper to go farther than to show that the rate of mortality, during the first year of selection, of select assured lives is so materially different from what it has hitherto been represented, as to lead to the inference that the data from which the erroneous deduction has been made cannot be true data for the ascertainment of the value of selection. To investigate the rate of mortality of select lives at separate ages, I conceive to be of the utmost importance for the elucidation of truth, and the proper direction of sanatory inquiries; but I do not consider that sufficient data at present exist for the determination of this, and these can only be obtained by a united inquiry. I shall be very happy if the present observations have any effect in hastening such an investigation, which sooner or later must be entered upon.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1854

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 7 note * I must here notice an error in my former paper alluded to. In the fifth section I have erroneously stated the deaths out of 8781 lives in the “Equitable,” up to age 32 inclusive, as 29 in place of 27. This very considerably, if not entirely, alters the statement in the concluding paragraph of that section; and I will feel obliged by anyone who has preserved his copy, correcting the 29 into 27, and then deleting the whole paragraph.