This portion of the session will identify how current trends in underlying causes of death drive the all-cause mortality trends we now see emerging in the US and what factors may influence the trajectory of key causes of death in the future.   Recent published analyses by the SOA and internal studies by Swiss Re find broad parallels between mortality improvement trend observed in the general population and in pensioner and life insured population subsets, suggesting that exploration of causal drivers in the population has relevance to understanding emerging insured trends.  Population level data can also be further segmented into different per capita income groupings to explore whether trends in underlying causes of death vary within population subsets, and enable the study of aggregate and cause specific trend in groups that are more economically matched to certain groups of insured.

Attendees of this session should leave with a better understanding of the recent dominant age specific causal drivers of mortality trend that are likely to influence near term trend in US population and insured groups and have a better appreciation of the potential impact of external factors such as recessions and health risk factor burden on emerging trend.  Differences in age specific long and short term all-cause mortality trend trajectories will be reviewed and within the context of observed improvements explore whether leveling or exhaustion of key historic causal drivers of aggregate mortality trend is evident in vital statistics data.