Review of Report of Committee on Mortality for Disabled Lives

The problem of what mortality tables to use for injured worker pension reserves is not a new one for casualty actuaries. A study of this issue appeared in the 1945 PCAS. We looked at the data from that study using computer intensive non-linear regression to model the ratio of injured worker to standard mortality. The methodology and some of the conclusions may still be applicable today. In particular, injured worker mortality after some years comes close to standard mortality, and after some age may actually be lower. Because of this, not much credit can be taken on pension case reserves, even though for younger workers initial mortality is much higher than standard. Some technical issues in non-linear regression are addressed, including a method to adjust for heteroscedasticity and using the information matrix to measure the significance of the parameters. Keywords: LOB-Workers Comp