We present stochastic forecasts of the Social Security trust fund by modeling key demographic and economic variables as historical time series, and using the fitted models to generate computer simulations of future fund performance. We evaluate several plans for achieving long-term solvency by...

Entropy, or the gradual decline through age in the survivorship function, reflects the considerable amount of variance in length of life found in any human population. Part is due to the well-known variation in life expectancy between groups: large differences according to race, sex,...

This paper describes how stochastic population forecasts are used to inform and analyze policies related to government spending on the elderly, mainly in the context of the industrialized nations. The paper first presents methods for making probabilistic forecasts of demographic rates,...

This paper provides a flexible multi-factor framework to address some ongoing challenges in mortality modeling, with a special focus on the mortality curvature and possible mortality plateau for extremely old ages. We extend the Gompertz law Gompertz (1825) by proposing a multi-factor...

This paper describes how stochastic population forecasts are used to inform and analyze policies related to government spending on the elderly, mainly in the context of the industrialized nations. The paper first presents methods for making probabilistic forecasts of demographic rates,...

When should you claim a pension (such as Social Security) in the US? Much current advice focuses on the increase in the annual pension benefit as individuals delay claiming a pension, an increase due to the actuarial fairness of the system. However, individuals face two risks: whether they live...

Life expectancies in Portugal (81.3 years for females and 74.9 for males) and Spain (83.5 years for females and 76.9 for males) in 2005 rank among the lowest in Western Europe (Portuguese males) and the highest (Spanish females), respectively. This article studies the converging trends in...

Using data from the Human Mortality Database (HMD), the paper analyzes the increase in the life expectancy of the Spanish population during the three decades, 1970-2001, in order to ascertain which age and sex groups have made the most progress in terms of increasing life expectancy. Within the...