With more living to 100 and beyond, scientific puzzles and actuarial challenges

Published: Saturday, January 11, 2014 at 9:29 p.m. Last Modified: Saturday, January 11, 2014 at 9:29 p.m.

Even now, one prominent scientist says the life expectancy revolution is giving us roughly a 10-year postponement of death.

Mortality is being shifted outward, said James Vaupel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. All you have to do is look at the historical change in the start of old age, the point when your chance of death rises above 1 percent. For Swedish women in 1950 this happened at age 57; in 1960 it was age 63, and in 1970 it was 68.

The prospect of living to 100 stirs up lots of emotions, but it is especially daunting for actuaries the folks who juggle sophisticated math equations to set the prices and payouts for pensions, annuities, life insurance and long-term care policies.

If they bet wrong on when baby boomers will die, the insurance and financial services industries could be in turmoil.

Lately, their normally quiet and careful profession has experienced a dramatic upheaval: In the last 10 years, according to best estimates, the number of people over the age of 110 appears to have doubled.

Longer lives have sharpened the problem of underfunded pension systems, and indirectly threatened the retirement security of many Americans.

So in 2002, as it was becoming apparent that standard life expectancy tables were being undermined by a huge longevity risk, members of a professional group, the Society of Actuaries, assembled leading demographers and scientists to help them answer a pressing question: Just how long will a normal lifespan get?

We thought we would meet and we would have an answer, and that would be that, said Anna Rappaport, an actuarial consultant and one of the founders of the societys Living to 100 Symposium.

Were now meeting for the seventh time, and were still asking the same questions.

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With more living to 100 and beyond, scientific puzzles and actuarial challenges