{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023467070401211203, 'fraction_numerical': 0.006056018168054504, 'mean_word_length': 4.873333333333333, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 1, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Actuaries and The Greying of The Developed World

How are we doing? The world is now embarked on a new millennium. It seems therefore appropriate to ask how actuarial science is fareing. The good news is, as actuaries, we can claim at least a partial intellectual victory. The basic actuarial principle is one for valuing future uncertain economic events. The principle prescribes computing the expected present value of the future random economic events and adding a risk-based component. Actuaries have developed and applied this idea over the past three hundred and fifty years. Within the past century, financial economists, using a combination of observations and theory, have established that open markets for financial instruments and commodities perform the same function. In fact, these markets use the same basic idea. This realisation has spawned a flood of technical ideas and business innovations. Alas, actuaries were not the pioneers in this extension of their basic ideas. They are now at work developing the implications of the new insights about financial markets in their traditional fields of application. In looking through a glass darkly toward the future, perhaps we should try to make out new fields of applications for the updated set of actuarial tools. Social and economic changes have made some of the traditional fields of application less fertile. For example, dramatically improved mortality, extensions of social insurance, smaller families and multiple wage earners within families have slowed the growth rate of life insurance. Are there new and pressing business or social problems that are amenable to management using actuarial models? I believe that the answer is ‘yes’. To support this optimistic response, I will turn to expert opinion. In its one hundred and fifty six years of existence, the membership rolls of the Institute of Actuaries have listed a host of creative people and more than a few real characters. Augustus DeMorgan (1806-1871) belongs to the intersection of the set of creative mathematicians and the set of interesting characters, and he belonged to the Institute. He was the grandson of James Dobson, whose ideas provided a foundation for the Society of Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships. DeMorgan entered Cambridge at age sixteen, earned a BA, but because of objections to a theological requirement, left without an MA. It is easy to dismiss DeMorgan as good in mathematics, but, in essence, a harmless pedant. Apparently he had no interest in politics. He never voted, and never visited the House of Commons, the Tower or Westminster Abbey. B.A.J. 10, I, 1-4 (2004)