Life Expectancy in the Future

Prior to the twentieth century, survival to a very old age meant living to 50 or 60 years; now, it means living beyond age 95. What will life expectancy be in the twenty-first century? Will life expectancy continue to increase as it has over the course of this century, or will the rate of increase eventually slow and perhaps stop as life expectancy approaches the limits of the life span? Longevity has had a direct impact on the cost of public pension systems; thus, forecasting mortality improvement in the future is an important component of projecting the financial health of public pension programs.On October 30, 1997, the SOA organized a day-long seminar entitled “Impact of Mortality Improvement on Social Security: Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.” The purpose of the seminar was to bring together experts on mortality rates from different disciplines to examine factors affecting mortality change and mortality assumptions throughout North America and to provide advice about forecasting mortality rates in the future. Presenters and participants included a wide array of experts from around the world and across disciplines: actuaries, biologists, demographers, and economists, as well as actuaries representing the governments of Canada, Mexico, the U.S., and Great Britain. This paper summarizes their day-long discussion, which addressed comparisons of mortality rates over time, across nations, and even across species. Causes of changes in mortality rates ranging from changes in the physical environment to socioeconomic considerations were discussed and debated, as were expectations about mortality rates in the future. Methods for projecting mortality rates were also presented and debated.The seminar was organized, in part, to respond to background papers commissioned by the SOA. These papers analyzed the current literature and compared mortality improvement in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. The seminar also served as a source of information for estimating the impact of mortality improvement on the financial status of public pension programs in these countries.