PensionsOct 31 2014

Flu and other factors skew mortality rates: study

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A fundamental review of mortality rates is needed because war, Spanish flu and other factors have led to significant errors in their calculation, a pensions academic has claimed.

Speaking about the 53-page paper Phantoms Never Die: Living with Unreliable Mortality Data, David Blake, director of the Pensions Institute, said: “Mortality rates are determined by the number of people who die at a given age divided by the population who remain alive at that age.

“We found that an uneven pattern of births within a given calendar year is a major cause of error in the estimated mid-year population.”

The institute, part of Cass Business School, analysed Office for National Statistics figures with Heriot-Watt University, Durham University Business School and Prudential Financial.

It found uneven patterns were “leading to errors of more than 9 per cent in the estimated size of some England and Wales birth cohorts”.

The study revealed that in 1919, shortly after the First World War and at the height of the Spanish flu epidemic, births at the mid-point of the year were much lower than the year’s average, which could be linked to a pattern of mortality improvements.

Adviser view

Jason Witcombe, director of London-based Evolve Financial Planning, said: “With pension planning, mortality tables are one part of the process, but family history is also quite important.”