Tag: longevity

A Conversation With Benny Goodman

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.lifehealth.com/a-conversation-with-benny-goodman/

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PEK: Your research reveals a conundrum when comparing a variable annuity with systematic withdrawals from investment accounts (assuming similar investment returns): the annuity will generally outperform. How do we convey this very basic equivalency to our clients? 

BG: In my experience, I’ve seen that when some people get to retirement, they may have upwards of a half a million dollars in their accounts. Financial planners owe their clients more than just plans to help them accumulate assets and some well-wishes. Most people do not understand how to generate income from their savings that will last the rest of their lives.

Savings are exposed to market risk that can erode account balances before or in retirement, as we saw in The Great Recession of 2009 and the economic contraction during the coronavirus pandemic. And fifty percent of the population can expect to live beyond the average life expectancy in retirement, exposing them to longevity risk.

The practical reality is that most individuals cannot insulate themselves from risk on their own. Annuitizing a portion of a portfolio’s assets can help mitigate these issues.

PEK: You demonstrate that delaying the start of an annuity by five years may cost 5% in future income, which delaying ten years may cost 15%. Please talk about the time factor and the cost of delay.  

BG: The concept is based on something called “mortality credits.” When buying an annuity, you join an annuity pool. Every time someone dies early (before he spent all the money he contributed) the leftover money stays in the pool and is shared by all those still in the pool. The money becomes a mortality ‘credit’ for those who did not die. These mortality credits allow the former to get lifetime income. They start adding value from the day someone enters the pool. Those who purchase the annuity at a later time were not in that pool and do not get that credit. Purchasers only receive mortality credits for those people who died after the purchasers joined the pool. Lower mortality credit means lower lifetime income. Mortality credits have value by adding to income.

….

PEK: Likewise, how real is the prospect of outliving one’s assets today?

BG: It’s very real. Data from EBRI indicates that about 40% of Americans face the risk of running out of money in retirement.

Now, not many people continuously spend and then one day look at their account and say, “Oh no! There is no money left!” But well before that day, they will start adjusting their spending downward so as to make sure they don’t outlive their money. And some have to make drastic and painful decisions, like choosing between paying for rent or healthcare; to pay for the electric bill or for medicine. Some retirees will even take half the dosage of their prescribed medicine to conserve it. It may even require that retirees move in with a child rather than live in poverty. In certain family dynamics, living with elderly parents is expected, but it may not be ideal for many.

Author(s): P.E. Kelley, Benjamin Goodman

Publication Date: 30 Oct 2023

Publication Site: Advisor Magazine

Long-lived rivals: actuaries say Biden and Trump are not too old for office

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ft.com/content/ad3a97fc-6394-471b-95b6-a46576808f4a?accessToken=zwAF-p9xpktIkdOtOpf8Y5RHG9OVtqRldoCPSg.MEUCIDgGL7wEhhf0DcMprg_1VYV0TDGsyWYpn56E-cBhCGWoAiEA_YjdblG4oKzNoagG66jcPOhEtvtht7Du5gnihbZVDfU&sharetype=gift&token=82960010-bfb1-44e4-a677-de6e47ba5545

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Any predictions are by their nature uncertain, yet a longevity modelling firm has forecasted that both candidates are likely to live well beyond the end of the next presidency in 2029. According to Club Vita, actuarial data suggests both men could have more than another decade ahead of them.

The company, which offers analytical services to insurers, said its US model suggested Biden has a life expectancy of another 11 years, taking him to 91. Trump has 14 more years to look forward to, per the model, meaning he would die at 90.

The model’s inputs include affluence, marital status, and employment. These key demographics for both Biden and Trump put them in the same favourable categories for the main factors, including addresses in the top category for life expectancy: the analysts used Trump’s Palm Beach address and Biden’s Delaware home.

Erik Pickett, a New Jersey-based actuary for Club Vita, said a wide range of factors could prove its model wrong, from whether the candidates “are in significantly different health to the average of someone with the same characteristics” to the fact that presidents have “access to higher quality medical treatments” than the typical American.

Author(s): Ian Smith in London and David Crow in New York

Publication Date: 30 April 2023

Publication Site: FT.com

Pension reform in France: Which countries have the lowest and highest retirement ages in Europe?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/06/pension-reform-in-france-which-countries-have-the-lowest-and-highest-retirement-ages-in-eu

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The gap between women and men in expected years of retirement varies from 2.0 years in Ireland to 7.5 years in Cyprus. 

By 2020, European women typically can expect to live 4.3 years more than men after they exit the labour market. 

While the EU average is 4.6 years, in France, the gender gap stands in favour of women by a total of 3.6 years.

Interestingly, life expectancy in retirement for both highly varies across Europe. For men, it ranges from 14 years in Latvia to 24 years in Luxembourg.

For women, it varies from 18.9 years in Latvia to 28.4 years in Greece. Women are expected to have 26 years or more to spend while retired in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain.

Author(s): Servet Yanatma

Publication Date: 6 Apr 2023

Publication Site: euronews

You Might Live Longer Than You Think. Your Finances Might Not.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-finances-and-how-many-of-us-get-our-money-needs-wrong-51a660a2?st=latmuov31yafzz9&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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Demographers and actuaries make the following distinction between life expectancy and longevity: Life expectancy refers to the average number of years someone will live from a given age, whereas longevity refers to how long he or she might live if everything goes well, typically expressed as the probability of living beyond a certain age such as 85, 90 or even 100.

A growing body of evidence shows that many people are ignorant of their so-called longevity risk—the probability of living a very long time—and the complications that presents. 

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Drs. Hurwitz and Mitchell note that retirement calculators provide information about average life expectancy, but not longevity. They have found that about five times as many Census Bureau publications relate to life expectancy as longevity. Thus, people who have planned appropriately for their life expectancy might miss how likely they are to live longer. 

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People can look up their longevity risk with an online Longevity Illustrator maintained by the American Academy of Actuaries and Society of Actuaries, based off the latest mortality data from the Social Security Administration. 

Author(s): Josh Zumbrun

Publication Date: 10 Feb 2023

Publication Site: WSJ

23 Tidbits About the Human Operating System

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/23-tidbits-human-operating-system-nate-worrell/

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1- We Aren’t Totally Human – Almost half of the cells in our body don’t come from us. We have a universe of microorganisms, each of which brings their own DNA into the mix. From a BBC report:

“The human genome – the full set of genetic instructions for a human being – is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.

But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.

Prof Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist from Caltech, argues: “We don’t have just one genome, the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augment the activity of our own.

“What makes us human is, in my opinion, the combination of our own DNA, plus the DNA of our gut microbes.”

2- We share DNA with Bananas and Copied Viral DNA: Our closest genetic relative is the chimp, but we are connected to dogs and cats and even fruit flies and yes, bananas.

Author(s): Nate Worrell

Publication Date: 1 Jan 2023

Publication Site: Longevity Assistant at LinkedIn

Is Longevity Escape Velocity Science Fiction?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://insights.longevityassistant.com/2022/05/is-longevity-escape-velocity-science.html?m=1

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A new series called “Let’s Talk Longevity” kicked of with a conversation (sort of debate) between Drs. Aubrey De Grey and Charles Brenner, centering around the possibility of achieving “Longevity Escape Velocity” (LEV).

De Grey’s position imagines the possibility (50% chance in next few decades) of a “Methusalarity” a moment in which we begin to reverse some aspects of “aging” , primarily via “damage repair” at such a rate that we are able to repair damage in the body as fast as or faster than that damage is occurring. More concretely defined, it can be thought of as 20-30 years more of expected healthy life at age 60 when anti aging therapies begin.

Author(s): Nate Worrell

Publication Date: May 2022, accessed 20 May 2022

Publication Site: Longevity Assistant

Book Review: Lifespan

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-lifespan

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David Sinclair – Harvard professor, celebrity biologist, and author of Lifespan – thinks solving aging will be easy. “Aging is going to be remarkably easy to tackle. Easier than cancer” are his exact words, which is maybe less encouraging than he thinks.

There are lots of ways that solving aging could be hard. What if humans worked like cars? To restore an old car, you need to fiddle with hundreds of little parts, individually fixing everything from engine parts to chipping paint. Fixing humans to such a standard would be way beyond current technology.

Or what if the DNA damage theory of aging was true? This says that as cells divide (or experience normal wear and tear) they don’t copy their DNA exactly correctly. As you grow older, more and more errors creep in, and your cells become worse and worse at their jobs. If this were true, there’s not much to do either: you’d have to correct the DNA in every cell in the body (using what template? even if you’d saved a copy of your DNA from childhood, how do you get it into all 30 trillion cells?) This is another nonstarter.

Sinclair’s own theory offers a simpler option. He starts with a puzzling observation: babies are very young [citation needed]. If a 70 year old man marries a 40 year old woman and has a baby, that baby will start off at zero years old, just like everyone else. Even more interesting, if you clone a 70 year old man, the clone start at zero years old.

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So Sinclair thinks aging is epigenetic damage. As time goes on, cells lose or garble the epigenetic markers telling them what cells to be. Kidney cells go from definitely-kidney-cells to mostly kidney cells but also a little lung cell and maybe some heart cell in there too. It’s hard to run a kidney off of cells that aren’t entirely sure whether they’re supposed to be kidney cells or something else, and so your kidneys (and all your other organs) break down as you age. He doesn’t come out and say this is literally 100% of aging. But everyone else thinks aging is probably a combination of many complicated processes, and I think Sinclair thinks it’s mostly epigenetic damage and then a few other odds and ends that matter much less.

Author(s): Scott Alexander

Publication Date: 1 Dec 2021

Publication Site: Astral Codex Ten

Mega trend 10: The democratization of longevity

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.clubvita.us/news-and-insights/mega-trend-10-the-democratization-of-longevity

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Illustrated below is the evolution of life expectancy at birth for seven Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries: Canada, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Across the seven countries, male life expectancy at birth ranged from 64.8 years to 68.2 years in 1960, and 69.8 years to 81.1 years in 2017, demonstrating an increase in the inequality of life expectancy of almost eight years between these countries over the period. For females, the increase was approximately four years. The inequality in life expectancy is more apparent and unsettling if we consider, for example, developing countries in Africa, averaging a life expectancy of around 63 years in 2019.

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Altogether, I believe greater democratization of longevity is achievable with the adoption of health technologies, while ensuring they are accessible and affordable. I am hopeful but I see several challenges ahead. Such a reality will be reliant on governments, health care professionals, and patients’ acceptance and reliance on what the future of health holds. It will also require global partnerships to build out ecosystems that will facilitate inclusive innovation.

Author(s): Shantel Aris

Publication Date: 22 Sept 2021

Publication Site: Club Vita

30 really is the new 20 (for some people – determining who they are will become crucial for pension plans and insurers)

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.clubvita.us/news-and-insights/mega-trend-9-30-really-is-the-new-20-for-some-people-determining-who-they-are-will-become-crucial-for-pension-plans-and-insurers

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Moshe Milevsky claims that someone could be up to 20 years younger biologically than their chronological age, and that biological age is a much be a better way of determining a person’s longevity. If this is true, is there a way that organizations that specialize in longevity and/or mortality and that use mathematical calculations in order to determine risk could use biological age instead of chronological age to predict future health and longevity?

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There are two methods used to calculate biological age, coined by Milevsky as the “living” methodology or the “dying” methodology a.k.a. the mortality-adjusted approach.

Both methods begin with the collection of data. A researcher would first gather data from a large group of people at a wide range of ages, collecting biological samples and measurements in order to record various physiological and molecular variables (such as heart rate, blood pressure, mutations of DNA, or the presence of certain proteins in the blood). Researchers may also collect data on variables that they believe will be correlated with enhancement or deterioration of a person’s physiological condition, such as their wealth, occupation or even their appearance or number of Facebook friends!

Author(s): Nikiya Marilla

Publication Date: 16 Sept 2021

Publication Site: Club Vita

Japan’s older population hits record high

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/09/20/national/japans-older-population-hits-record-high/

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The estimated number of people aged 65 or older in Japan stood at a record high of 36.4 million as of Wednesday, an increase of 220,000 from a year before, the internal affairs ministry said Sunday.

The share of those aged adults in the nation’s total population rose to a record 29.1%, the highest among 201 countries and regions across the world.

Older men totaled 15.83 million, or 26% of the total male population. There were 20.57 million elderly women, or 32% of the female population.

The ministry released the data ahead of Respect for the Aged Day on Monday, a national holiday.

In Japan, the share of aged people has been rising since 1950. The figure is expected to rise to as high as 35.3% in 2040 when the so-called second baby-boomer generation, or people born in the early 1970s, reaches the age of 65 or older, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

Publication Date: 20 Sept 2021

Publication Site: The Japan Times

The economic value of targeting aging

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-021-00080-0?fbclid=IwAR30GYDrmx1ck_1CkFvkoJUR4EttL4OxkNOgD9ZYft_jvqYa-inOhhthZao

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Developments in life expectancy and the growing emphasis on biological and ‘healthy’ aging raise a number of important questions for health scientists and economists alike. Is it preferable to make lives healthier by compressing morbidity, or longer by extending life? What are the gains from targeting aging itself compared to efforts to eradicate specific diseases? Here we analyze existing data to evaluate the economic value of increases in life expectancy, improvements in health and treatments that target aging. We show that a compression of morbidity that improves health is more valuable than further increases in life expectancy, and that targeting aging offers potentially larger economic gains than eradicating individual diseases. We show that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion. Ultimately, the more progress that is made in improving how we age, the greater the value of further improvements.

Author(s): Andrew J. Scott, Martin Ellison, David A. Sinclair

Publication Date: 5 July 2021

Publication Site: Nature Aging

Who Gets to Live to 100 and Who Doesn’t? Reviewing the 2020 Living to 100 Symposium Monograph

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.soa.org/sections/reinsurance/reinsurance-newsletter/2021/march/rsn-2021-03-kaufhold/

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Given these advances in understanding the theoretical methods of evaluating multiple, related mortality data sets, it is particularly promising that the Human Mortality Database, with the SOA’s sponsorship, has recently made available mortality data for the United States at the level of the individual county. Moreover, Professor Magali Barbieri of University of California, Berkeley in January 2021 published an SOA Research Report[3] on “Mortality by Socio-economic Category in the United States” using this data series. Professor Barbieri is one of the directors of the HMD project, which is jointly run by UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany and support from the Center on the Economics and Development of Aging (CEDA) and the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). In her paper, Barbieri studies socio-economic differences linked to mortality differentials by county, based on information available at the county level regarding education, occupation, employment, income, and housing. The gap between the highest and lowest county decile is huge and growing. In 2018, the qx-rate for 45-year-old men in counties with the lowest Socioeconomic Index Score (SIS) was 2.5 times that for men of that age in counties with the highest SIS. This gap is even greater than the difference between smokers and non-smokers. Professor Barbieri’s report shows the widening trend between the different socio-economic strata which she captures by grouping the counties into deciles by SIS. While the highest SIS score is associated with a life expectancy that matches or even beats the OECD average, people living in counties with the lowest SIS have hardly seen any improvement in their life expectancy over the last four decades. Comparing the average life expectancy at birth within the highest decile of counties to the lowest, there was a gap of 3.0 years in 1982, the first year for which consistent data was available. This gap has more than doubled since then, rolling in at 6.6 years difference in life expectancy in 2018. That is an increase of 120 percent. Worse still, the gender gap once again manifests itself in the mortality trends, with females showing an increase of the socio-economic mortality gap of 260 percent over the 36-year period, compared to 76 percent for males.

Author(s): Kai Kaufhold

Publication Date: March 2021

Publication Site: Reinsurance News at the Society of Actuaries