Non-Traditional Mortality Studies

Using the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File (DMF) provides the opportunity to perform non-traditional mortality studies – non-traditional in that they are not subject to the constraints of policy issue and policy administration. Non-traditional mortality studies can provide important information about underwriting decisions, the predictive value of laboratory tests, the accuracy of life expectancy (LE) estimation or post-lapse mortality.

In many situations, there will be repeated encounters: Multiple underwriting decisions at different points in time with changing medical history; multiple lab tests at different points in time with different results; multiple LE estimations. The multiplicity of encounters begs the question: Which encounter should be used to define the onset of exposure to risk – the first, last or every?

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