In the author's 1955 paper an attempt was made to divide mortality into six component parts, one being the rate of senescent deaths, the others the respective rates of different types of anticipated deaths, the distinction between senescent and anticipated deaths having previously been drawn by Clarke in his centenary paper. At the same time the author advocated an investigation into the mortality of assured lives by cause of death, one of the uses of such investigation being the continuous availability of a comparison between assured lives' mortality at different durations and national mortality. The Joint Mortality Investigation Committee is indeed now conducting such an investigation, starting with the year of experience 1964 and, though no report on this investigation has yet been published, it is reasonable to presume that the Committee's first such report will become available in the fairly near future.

Since the idea of a wage-related national pension scheme was first launched in tangible form by the publication in 1957 of the Labour Party's ‘National Superannuation’ plan there has been a state of uneasy coexistence between national and occupational pension schemes in the United Kingdom. Social security systems providing not merely basic flat-rate benefits, but also benefits related to earnings, had been in existence for some years in other European countries, but it was not until the National Insurance Act, 1959 took effect in April 1961 that a national graduated pension scheme became a reality in the United Kingdom. Established at a modest level and designed primarily as a means of raising revenue to meet the rising outgo on flat-rate benefits, this graduated scheme has never seemed likely to endure in its original form. Nevertheless the National Insurance Act, 1966 has grafted on to it a scheme to provide short-term graduated sickness, unemployment and widows' benefits.