Longevity Bulletin

In the latest issue:

One of the key messages in Issue 03 of Longevity Bulletin is that whilst life expectancy and health equality are both fundamental measures of human progress, longer average lifespans may mean greater lifespan variation at older ages. Read more in the latest issue of Longevity Bulletin.

About the author

Alison O'Connell is a researcher in longevity and its policy implications at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She started her career as a life reinsurance actuary, became a strategy consultant in the financial services industry, and then spent five years as the first Director of the Pensions Policy Institute. Her research interests include subjective longevity expectations and their impact on retirement planning, how mortality forecasts and longevity trends are applied in policy and international pension policy reforms. Alison has an MSc in gerontology and is working on a PhD about longevity risk. She is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

Focus on: Variation in longevity

This focus article explains that interpretation of inequality data should be informed by an understanding of the associations between the measures used and their expected behaviour over time. 

The amount of variation in age at death for a population tends to reduce over time, as average lifespans increase. At the same time, the variation in age at death among older people may increase, consistent with survivors benefiting from better mortality but being more disposed to fraility, relative to populations with lower average lifespans. Not all variance in age at death will be avoidable inequality, as some variance will be present in all populations. In populations where there have been successful early life mortality improvements, variations in age at death has shifted from younger to older ages. In these populations, can we both reduce variation in age at death and continue to increase average lifespans?

Longevity research news

A roundup of recently published research selected for its relevance to longevity knowledge and interest to Bulletin readers. Reviews research into the "golden cohort", compression of morbidity among supercentenarians, the gap between male and female mortality and the ONS revised population projections for the UK.

News from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

Reviews the latest news, including the analysis by the CMI of 2011 mortality data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing an improvement of 4 per cent in mortality rates in 2011, compared to the average over the 10 years to 2010 of 2.4 per cent.

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