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On the Rates of Mortality prevailing amongst the Male and Female Lives assured in the Eagle Insurance Company during the 44 years ending 31 December 1851

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

Charles Jellicoe*
Affiliation:
Eagle Insurance Company

Extract

In discussing the subject of assurance valuations and the most approved methods of making them, I have often had occasion to draw attention to the great importance of ascertaining with the utmost possible accuracy the rates of mortality and interest which have been found to prevail in any case under consideration, so as to determine what rates of premium are really required to provide, independently of other exigencies, for the sums assured, and how far the particular rates charged are sufficient or more than sufficient for that purpose. I have insisted the more strenuously on the necessity of this proceeding, from the conviction that in almost every Association some peculiarity in the prevailing mortality will be found to exist, distinguishing it from that of its neighbour, and arising from the different character of such influences as the condition of life of the persons whose lives are assured, the mode of selection, the greater or less predominance of the male sex and of assurances made by persons on their own lives over such as are effected on the lives of others, the constitution of the Company, and so on.

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

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References

page 200 note * These tables occupy 152 half sheets of “Royal” paper, and comprise, exclusively of other items, upwards of sixty thousand entries in the columns headed with the age.

page 205 note * . See Lacroix's Traité Elémentaire du Calcul des Probabilités, p. 199.

page 205 note † Lx = 86—x. The process given by Mr. (now Sir John William) Lubbock, in the paper read by him before the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and printed in their Transactions, is one—if I recollect rightly—for the direct determination of the values of annuities by means of equations expressing rates of interest and mortality.

page 206 note * The mode of obtaining this expression I defer till a future occasion, when I propose to examine all the methods that have been devised for the purpose in question.

page 207 note * The labour required in this adjusting process is not great; tat were it otherwise it is well bestowed, for it is in effect a searching out of the law pervading the data; and when this adjustment is once satisfactorily effected, we may be satisfied that the object is attained, and that we have interpreted nature with as much accuracy and fidelity as it is possible, I believe, under all the circumstances to do.

page 209 note * The values obtained by the equation are, in fact, those of ordinates to the adjusted curve given in the diagram, the sum total of them being equal, or very nearly equal, to the sum total of the irregular numbers in column 3, pages 214 and 215.