Glossary of longevity terms Flashcards
Accident hump
The phenomenon of increased mortality rates for people in their late teens and early twenties in a given population.
Actual/Expected (A/E) ratio
The ratio of actual deaths in a specific population to those predicted by a defined mortality table.
Age effect
A common way to analyze historical mortality improvements is to break them down into three components: age, period and cohort. Age effects reflect the fact that progress in reducing mortality may be concentrated amongst certain age groups.
Age rating
A crude way of tailoring a base table to fit the characteristics of a particular population, by shifting the rates up or down by one or more years.
Age standardization / standardisation
The process of calculating average mortality rates using weightings based on a standard reference population.
Age-period-cohort (or APC) analysis
A common way to analyze historical mortality improvements is to break them down into three components: age, period and cohort.
Ageing/aging
The process of deterioration of the physical condition of a living organism that ultimately leads to death.
Akaike Information Criterion (AIC)
A goodness of fit model often used in longevity modelling.
Alternative Risk Transfer (ART)
The transfer of risk without using traditional insurance products. In respect of a pension plan’s longevity risk, an alternative risk transfer would be any transfer of risk without the purchase of annuity contracts covering the individual participants of the plan.
Annuity
A financial instrument offered by an insurance company that pays a regular income to the recipient either for the rest of their life (a lifetime annuity) or for a fixed period (a fixed term annuity).
Antibody
A large Y-shaped blood protein produced in response to and counteracting a specific antigen, such as bacteria and viruses. Determining whether someone has an antibody particular to a certain virus is done by a “serology test.” Determining what proportion of a population has antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 is important in separating the IFR from the CFR.
Baby boomers
People born between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s.
Base table
A set of age-specific rates of assumed mortality (or survival), intended to represent a snapshot of mortality at a specific point of time in a given population without any allowance for future variation.
Base year
The reference year for a base table.
Baseline longevity (or current longevity)
A snapshot of current longevity captured by a base table.
Baseline model
A model used to calculate baseline longevity (a snapshot of current longevity), usually in the form of a base table.
Basis (or baseline) risk
When calculating the longevity for a given population, this is the risk of how much the given population differs from the population used to calculate the baseline longevity assumption.
Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC)
A goodness of fit model often used in longevity modelling.
Biological age
The measure of how old a person seems, allowing for the fact the aging of the body takes place at different rates for different people depending on genetic and environmental influences.
Biological limit on life
An ageing theory which postulates that humans (along with other species) have a natural limit to their lifespans that cannot be exceeded.
Birth cohort
A group of people from a given population defined by the time of their birth.
Blue collar / white collar
A distinction of different types of workforce commonly used as a ratings factor in the United States.
Bulk annuities (or group annuity)
An insurance offering popular with pension plans where a portfolio of annuity contracts is purchased to cover a group of participants of the plan.
Buy-in
The purchase of bulk annuities by a pension plan resulting in the insurance contracts remaining as plan assets.
Buy-out
The purchase of bulk annuities by a pension plan resulting in passing all the governance and control of the assets to the insurance company.
Cairns-Blake-Dowd (or CBD) model
A mathematical model for projecting historical trends in mortality improvements into the future.
Calment, Jeanne
A French woman from Arles, born in 1875, who is the oldest recorded human with, a lifespan of 122 years and 164 days.
Canadian Pensioners’ Mortality (CPM) tables
A series of standard tables published by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries as part of the Canadian Pensioners’ Mortality study.
Case Fatality Rate (CFR)
In epidemiology, the Case Fatality Rate of a disease is the percentage of known cases of a disease that cause the patient to die. It is equal to the number of people known to have died from the disease divided by the number of known cases of people having the disease. In other words, the numerator is the total number of people known to have died from the disease. The denominator is the total number of known cases of the disease.
Cause of cause of death projection model
A longevity projection model that aims to predict the future changes to mortality rates by modeling the changes in the underlying causes of specific causes of death.
Cause of death
The reason recorded for the death of a given individual. Studying common causes of death and the changes in their occurrence within a population can help us understand how longevity may change in the future.
Cause of death projection model
A longevity projection model that aims to predict future changes to mortality rates by modeling the changes in causes of death.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a United States federal agency under the agency of the Department of Health and is the leading national public health institute of the US.
Chronological age
Chronological age is age measured as time elapsed since the date of birth.
Club Vita
A center of excellence for improving the understanding of human longevity.
A community of organizations with a shared interest in longevity and a belief that the ‘bigger’ the data, the lower the (statistical) noise.
A provider of longevity risk informatics to support pension plans’ risk management strategies and enable market innovation.
Clustering algorithm
A technique used to cluster together values of a rating factor into groups exhibiting similar characteristics , so that the differences between groups become statistically significant.
CMI Library of projections
A ‘library’ of mortality projections compiled by the Continuous Mortality Investigation in the UK up to 2014.
CMI mortality projections model
A deterministic model developed in the UK by the Continuous Mortality Investigation for projecting mortality rates into the future. (Often abbreviated to “the CMI model”).
Cohort
A group of people from a given population that share a common time period for some event (such as birth or retirement).
Cohort effect
A common way to analyze historical mortality improvements is to break them down into three components: age, period and cohort. Cohort effects relate to the unique experience of a particular birth cohort.
Cohort life expectancy
Life expectancy determined using projected death statistics for one particular birth cohort and generally assuming future changes in death rates (typically a reduction, often referred to as an ‘improvement’).
Collateral
A form of security offered by a counterparty in an ongoing transaction, where the value of promised payments can vary due to external events.
Compensation law
The compensation law of mortality (or late-life mortality convergence) states that the relative differences in death rates between different human populations decrease with age.
Compression of mortality
The ongoing effect resulting in the narrowing of the range of ages over which most individuals die.
Concentration of risk
This is a measure for how concentrated longevity risk is among individual members of a given population.
Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI)
An organization run by the UK actuarial profession that collates mortality data from UK insurers and UK pension plans and produces mortality tables.
Coronavirus
Coronaviruses are a type of common virus found in different animals. There are many different kinds of coronaviruses, some causing colds and mild respiratory illnesses while others can cause more serious illness including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Only seven coronaviruses are known to cause disease in humans.
Counterparty
When entering into a transaction with another party, that party is known as the counterparty to the transaction.
Counterparty risk
When entering into a transaction, there is a risk that the counterparty does not meet its contractual obligations (for example, they fail to make a payment at the required time). This risk is known as counterparty risk.
Covariate
A rating factor which is allowed to vary simultaneously in a longevity model, used to differentiate between individuals with different characteristics.
COVID-19
COVID-19 is the disease caused by the new coronavirus that emerged in China in December 2019. COVID-19 symptoms include a deep, dry cough, fever and shortness of breath. In rare cases, COVID-19 can lead to severe respiratory problems, kidney failure or death.
CPM-B improvement scale
A Canadian scale of future mortality rate improvements published by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries as part of the Canadian Pensioners’ Mortality study.
Credibility study
An experience analysis of a pension plan’s (or an insurance book’s) historical longevity data used to adjust standard tables to bring them more in line with a pension plan’s observed experience.
Credibility theory
A statistical theory used to combine multiple estimates from different sources when predicting future events.
De Grey, Aubrey
Aubrey de Grey is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is famous for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today to avoid death from age-related causes.
Death rate
Generally, a mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths in a given population of a given time period. The term is also commonly used by actuaries to refer to the probability of dying within the following year.
Demographic drift
The change in the types of people making up given population (such as the employees of a given company) over time.
Demography
The study of populations, and in particular the profile of populations (for example by age, gender, socio-economic group, ethnicity, etc) and how these profiles are changing.
Disease transmission model
A mathematical model used to model the transmission of an infectious disease.
Endemic (epidemiology)
A disease occurring frequently in a specific population / region.
Epidemic
The sudden outbreak of an infectious disease which spreads rapidly, affects a large proportion of people and is geographically contained.
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and drivers of different health conditions (including but not limited to diseases) within certain populations, i.e., how diseases occur and why.
Excess winter deaths
A measure of how many more people in a given population die in the winter months (usually defined as December-March in the Northern Hemisphere) compared to the average for the rest of the year.
Expectation of life
The expectation of life is the length of time (generally measured in years) that an individual can expect to live. It is sometimes referred to as ‘life expectancy’.
Experience analysis
An assessment of actual mortality rates of a group of lives against those predicted by a standard table (such as SAPS tables in the UK, Pri 2012 or Pub 2010 in the US or CPM tables in Canada) or a rating factor model (such as VitaCurves).
Exposed-to-risk
The number of individuals within a specified population who are ‘at risk’ of a specified event occurring to them or in relation to them.
First life
In a pension plan or an annuity contract, a first life refers to the individual who is initially entitled to payment.
Fixed leg
A series of fixed payments exchanged as part of a longevity swap.
Fixed term annuity
A financial instrument offered by an insurance company that pays a regular income to the recipient for a fixed period.
Flattening the curve (epidemiology)
The process of the number of people infected by a disease being spread out over a longer time period than initially predicted.
Floating leg
A series of variable payments exchanged as part of a longevity swap.
Future improvements
The projected reduction of mortality rates in the future.
Future improvements model
A projection model that projects levels of improvements to mortality rates into the future.
GAM/R tables
The Group Annuity Mortality (GAM) and Group Annuity Reserving (GAR) tables are a series of standard tables in the US used for assessing baseline longevity for solvency purposes.
Gavrilov and Gavrilova, Leonid and Natalia
Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova are prominent bio-demographers who applied the principles of reliability theory (the study of the failure of industrial systems) to human biology.
Generalized/Generalised Linear Model (GLM)
A mathematical model used to predict the outcome of a future event that follows the pattern of a specific statistical distribution.
Generation list
People born in and living through the same period are often thought to share certain characteristics. Here is a list of generations and some of their characteristics for people born after the mid-1920s.
Generation X
People born between the mid-1960s and late-1970s who grew up during a period of social transition with the end of the Cold War.
Generation Y
People born between the early-1980s and late-1990s.
Generation Z
People born after the late 1990s (no end date has emerged yet). Sometimes referred to as the i-generation.
Geo-demographics
The description of people according to where they live. Such descriptions are widely used in the world of market research.
Geriatric
A medical term: geriatric medicine refers to the clinical, preventive and social aspects of illness in older people.
Gerontology
The study of aging in humans.
Golden Cohort effect
The effect that UK retirees born around 1926 live longer lives than those born earlier or (immediately) later.
Gompertz, Benjamin
A British mathematician, actuary and Fellow of the Royal Society. His work on mortality tables led him in 1825 to develop his law of human mortality – known as the Gompertz curve.
Goodness of fit
The goodness of fit of a statistical model is how well the model fits a set of observed data.
Graduation
The mathematical process of ironing out bumps in observed mortality rates at individual ages to produce smoothed mortality or survival curves.
Grieving widows effect
The effect of mortality rates generally being higher for a surviving contingent second life (usually a spouse) than for the first life.
Group annuity (or bulk annuities)
An insurance offering popular with pension plans where a portfolio of annuity contracts is purchased to cover a group of participants of the plan.
Halley, Edmond
A prominent scientist of his day, now most famous for his comet. He also made a vital contribution to actuarial science, being the first person to publish life tables based on sound demographic data.
