The Society of Actuaries Releases Public Retirement Plans Mortality Tables, Pub-2010

Tables indicate that higher income is correlated with lower mortality, and teachers generally have the longest life expectancy of all professions studied

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Society of Actuaries

Jan 22, 2019, 09:00 ET

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Jan. 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Society of Actuaries (SOA) today released first-of-its-kind public retirement plan mortality tables, Pub-2010, which includes the individual mortality experience for teachers (school teachers, college professors), public safety professionals (police, firefighters, correctional officers) and general employees (judges, military, administrative staff). The SOA is releasing public plan mortality tables to give pension actuaries and plan sponsors current information to assist in setting mortality assumptions. This is the first time the SOA has studied public retirement plan mortality separately from the private sector.

The SOA's mortality tables include 46 million life-years of exposure data and 580,000 deaths from 78 public pension plans and 35 public pension systems across the country. Analysis of this robust dataset reveals that teachers have the longest age-65 life expectancy of the job categories studied:

	Teachers	General Employees	Safety Professionals
Females	90.03	88.48	87.68
Males	87.70	85.49	85.27

Further, the amount-weighted deferred-to-62 annuity values produced by the public sector teachers' tables were consistently larger than those produced by corresponding public safety and general employee tables. Generally speaking, this means that pension obligations for teachers are greater than obligations for other job categories, when comparing the same benefit amount. The SOA's tables also suggest that higher income is correlated with lower mortality, as income succeeded job category as the most statistically significant mortality factor across all job categories.

"It's important for actuaries and pension industry professionals to understand that the mortality tables in this study should be interpreted based on each individual job category," said Dale Hall, Managing Director of Research for the SOA. "There is no single mortality table covering aggregate public retirement plan mortality across all professions studied, due to the varying mortality patterns from each job category."

The SOA decided to conduct a study specifically focused on public plan mortality after seeing initial data during the development of their private sector mortality tables, RP-2014, which indicated private pensions have differing levels of mortality than public pensions.

The SOA also notes that the financial impact of implementing the new public pension mortality tables will vary based on each individual job category, as well as the relative mix of member ages and other demographics in each pension plan. Mortality tables are just one of the many assumptions that go into pension funding calculations, so the SOA encourages professionals in the field to perform their own analysis to understand the impact of these tables on their own plan. It is ultimately up to plan sponsors, working with their plan actuaries, to determine how to incorporate emerging mortality and mortality improvement into their plan valuations.

An exposure draft of the mortality tables was released to industry stakeholders for feedback in the fall of 2018. For additional information on the final tables, you can read the full Pub-2010 report here: https://www.soa.org/research-reports/2019/pub-2010-retirement-plans/

About the Society of Actuaries

With roots dating back to 1889, the Society of Actuaries (SOA) is the world's largest actuarial professional organization with more than 30,000 actuaries as members. Through research and education, the SOA's mission is to advance actuarial knowledge and to enhance the ability of actuaries to provide expert advice and relevant solutions for financial, business and societal challenges. The SOA's vision is for actuaries to be the leading professionals in the measurement and management of risk. www.SOA.org.