A general procedure for constructing mortality models. (English) Zbl 1412.91045

Hunt, Andrew; Blake, David

N. Am. Actuar. J. 18, No. 1, 116-138 (2014).

Summary: Recently a large number of new mortality models have been proposed to analyze historic mortality rates and project them into the future. Many of these suffer from being over-parametrized or have terms added in an ad hoc manner that cannot be justified in terms of demographic significance. In addition, poor specification of a model can lead to period effects in the data being wrongly attributed to cohort effects, which results in the model making implausible projections. We present a general procedure for constructing mortality models using a combination of a toolkit of functions and expert judgment. By following the general procedure, it is possible to identify sequentially every significant demographic feature in the data and give it a parametric structural form. We demonstrate using U.K. mortality data that the general procedure produces a relatively parsimonious model that nevertheless has a good fit to the data.

MSC:

91B30	Risk theory, insurance (MSC2010)
91D20	Mathematical geography and demography

Keywords:

mortality model construction; demography; longevity risk

Software:

Human Mortality

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