Mortality table

A mortality table gives, for each age, the probability that a living person dies within the year, and by construction the population surviving at each age from a conventional starting cohort. It is the basic instrument of all personal insurance, since the price of a death benefit and that of a life annuity are computed from the same set of probabilities but in opposite directions: the death insurer loses if people die too soon, the annuity insurer if they live too long. In France the regulatory tables are approved by ministerial order and distinguish commitments contingent on survival from those contingent on death, the former having to be generational so as to reflect lengthening lifespans. A table too optimistic about mortality underprices annuities and overprices death benefits, an error that shows up only after years and cannot be corrected on a book already written. The problem solved is that of a commitment made for forty years on an individual outcome that is unpredictable but whose collective average is remarkably stable.

The Test-Achats ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, handed down on March 1, 2011, banned pricing by sex from December 21, 2012. The French TH and TF 00-02 tables, built separately for men and women, still serve for reserving but can no longer support two different rates, even though the gap in life expectancy at birth between the sexes then exceeded six years in France.

table de survie, TH TF 00-02