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Explainers | VitaMins

The Risk of Living Longer: What if new senolytic drugs fulfil their potential?

People have a natural tendency to underestimate life expectancy and actuaries traditionally base future projections on extrapolations of observed historical experience; this can result in institutional blind spots to extreme future longevity events. But what would happen if one of these overlooked scenarios occurred?

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All News and insights

All the latest information, news and research from the Club Vita team.

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General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 25-04 – Do people believe human lifespan will reach 130 years?

Within the longevity world there is an active debate around the maximum achievable human lifespan. Some schools of thought believe we’ve pretty much reached our maximum. Others believe extreme long life might be just around the corner. In our recent Risk of Living Longer survey, we asked our participants what they thought.

28 April 2025

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 25-03 – Socio-economic differences in physical activity in the US

It’s well documented that increased physical activity contributes to better health and longevity outcomes. It is also well documented that lower socio-economic groups have lower longevity than higher socio-economic groups. Could the two be linked? In this edition of Top Charts, Erik Pickett compares activity levels in the US by socio-economic group.

18 March 2025

General interest | Other

Risk of Living Longer Survey, March 2025

Our ongoing webinar series – The Risk of Living Longer – explored the potential drivers of increased future longevity and delved into the profound question: How long can we go? Accompanying the series, we sent out a survey to participants asking them about their views on future longevity. It gives us great pleasure to present the results.

14 March 2025

Explainers | Expert response

Club Vita Summary: Society of Actuaries’ PUB-2016 Report (Exposure Draft, Jan 2025)

The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute’s Retirement Plans Experience Committee (RPEC) released the Pub-2016 Mortality Table Draft Exposure Report in January 2025, providing updated mortality tables for U.S. public pension plans. The tables were developed based on data from 2013 through 2019. In this edition of VitaMins, Carmen Gatta and Michael Reid summarize the SOA's report.

12 March 2025

Explainers | External publications

Old Tables, New Realities: The Changing Face of Pension Plan Mortality

Club Vita’s Carmen Gatta contributes an article discussing the power of multifactor mortality modeling to the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans’ Benefits Magazine.

4 February 2025

Explainers | External publications

Long-Term Drivers of Future Mortality

Club Vita's Erik Pickett joins Al Klein to discuss the paper "Long-Term Drivers of Future Mortality" in a podcast series for Research Insights, a Society of Actuaries Podcast.

30 January 2025

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 24-12: Do we really wish it could be Christmas every day?

Inspired by the festive classic I wish it could be Christmas Every Day by British glam-rock band Wizzard, in this edition of Top Charts, Erik Pickett ponders the impact on life expectancy if it really was Christmas every day.

19 December 2024

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 24-11: The rise of Alzheimer’s and dementia

Erik Pickett looks at deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s in the US and England & Wales. This cause already accounts for significant numbers of deaths, but with aging populations these numbers are likely to increase even further in the future – unless we manage to make progress with prevention or treatment!

27 November 2024

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 24-10: The impact of mortality on Actuarially Determined Contributions

In this edition of Top Charts Carmen Gatta looks at how normal cost contributions in a US Defined Benefit pension plan can vary with mortality assumptions.

4 November 2024

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 24-09: Happiness and life expectancy

In this edition of Top Charts, Jill Jamieson and Erik Pickett look at the correlation between happiness and life expectancy at birth.

18 September 2024

Explainers | VitaMins

The Risk of Living Longer: What if new senolytic drugs fulfil their potential?

22 August 2024

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 24-03 – Have we seen an end to COVID waves in the US?

US population level death data is now available through the end of 2023, giving us a good overview of excess deaths progressed through the year. In this addition of Top Charts, Erik Pickett examines how weekly deaths have progressed since the beginning of the pandemic, and asks whether we’ve now seen the end of extreme COVID waves of deaths in the US.

25 March 2024

General interest | Pandemic updates

How different states have experienced COVID-19 through December 31, 2023

This is an update of our analysis of state-level excess mortality data up to December 31, 2023 (data available as at February 27, 2024). COVID-19 deaths persist, but total deaths have dropped to levels broadly in line with pre-pandemic trends. Has society now adjusted to living with the virus as part of everyday life?

20 March 2024

Explainers | External publications

New CIA Statement Explores the Vital Link Between Education and Longevity

Many studies have found there is a positive correlation between education and longevity. Robert Brown, FCIA, conducted a literature review for the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) that examined several of these studies and the results were consistent – the more education people have, the longer they live. And the higher their educational attainment, the longer they live in good health. Insights included from our expert, Shantel Aris, Head of Longevity Experience Studies.

18 March 2024

General interest | Personal blogs

The Longevity of Robert Burns

"Tonight, Scots around the world will be celebrating the immortal memory of Robert Burns, our national poet. Burns made a remarkable contribution to the richness of humankind in his short time on Earth. Tributes to his legacy will touch on many aspects of his life. It made me wonder about his contribution to longevity." - Douglas Anderson

24 January 2024

Explainers | External publications

Club Vita responds to the IRS’s Request for Comment on Plan Specific Substitute Mortality Tables for Determining Present Value

On October 20th, 2023, the IRS issued a proposed update to its rule regarding plan-specific substitute mortality tables for determining present value and an accompanying Request for Comment.

23 January 2024

General interest | Personal blogs

Ten reasons to be cheerful: 2024 New Year edition

As has become his annual tradition, Douglas kicks off 2024 with a note of positivity. To help you keep the January blues at bay, he has collected together his top ten positive health stories from 2023.

8 January 2024

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 23-13: Tontine days of retirement

In this holiday-special edition of Top Charts, Erik Pickett and Carmen Gatta explore which group from song the 12 days of Christmas with whom it would be best to enter a tontine contract.

3 January 2024

General interest | VitaMins

VitaMins Health: GLP-1 obesity medications - will they be as big as statins for life expectancy?

The World Health Organization has referred to obesity as “one of today’s most blatantly visible – yet most neglected – public health problems”. But excitement is now rising around new appetite-suppressing medications with public health organizations hopeful that these treatments may help tackle this growing epidemic.

17 November 2023

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 23-10: US cause of death by socio-economic status over time

Fresh on our return from this year’s Society of Actuaries’ ImpACT conference, we were struck by how much discussion there was around causes of death and their differing impacts by socio-economic status. In response, in this Top Chart, Natalie and Erik look at how some common causes of death differ by socio-economic status in the US and how this has changed over time.

10 November 2023

Explainers | External publications

Club Vita responds to PBGC Request for Comment on Valuation Assumptions and Methods

On August 18th 2023, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) issued a proposed update to its rule regarding valuation assumptions and methods and an accompanying Request for Comment.

9 November 2023

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 23-07: US excess deaths in 2023

In this edition of Top Charts, Carmen Gatta and Erik Pickett discusses the drop in excess deaths since the beginning of 2023.

8 August 2023

Explainers | External publications

You Are Underestimating Longevity… and How Uncertain It Is

“Centenarians” are becoming more and more common. There are approximately 90,000 people in the U.S. who are over the age of 100, double the number in 2008. In stark contrast, headline life expectancy has fallen to 76 due to COVID-19 and other factors (technically, this is period life expectancy at birth). How should advisors make sense of these seemingly contradictory trends? How long should they plan for the clients to live?

1 August 2023

Business updates | Press releases

Club Vita hires Natalie Gleed to support growing US Pension Risk Transfer activity

Club Vita, an international leader in longevity data analytics, today announced the hiring of Natalie Gleed as Head of Business Development, US

12 July 2023

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 23-06: Are the top causes of death reflected in our search history?

There can often be a disconnect between perception and reality with regard to things that have the largest impact on our lives. But how much is this the case with causes of death? In this edition of Top Charts Mia Marcellus compares the top causes of death in our different geographies with their relative Internet search frequency.

5 July 2023

General interest | VitaMins

VitaMins Health: Antimicrobial resistance – AI to the rescue?

Antimicrobial resistance remains in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) top 10 global public health threats facing humanity – could AI help us in dealing with this existential risk?

15 June 2023

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 23-04: What happened in the US in 2022?

By the start of 2022, day-to-day life in the US had largely returned to ‘normal’ with most public health precautions introduced to combat COVID-19 being dropped. With this environment, how did excess mortality in the US play out and will 2022 mortality data be representative of the future? Erik Pickett explores this issue in our latest edition of Top Charts. (For a more in depth dive into this subject, check out our recent webinar.)

24 April 2023

Research & technical | Research & technical notes

CV22 US VitaCurves technical papers

Technical papers on modeling techniques and underlying data to accompany the release of our CV22 US VitaCurves model. This new release introduces adjustments for COVID-19 into the US VitaCurves model.

13 April 2023

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 23-03: Universal state retirement ages

There has recently been widespread debate across the globe (e.g. in Canada, the UK, the US and France) about potential increases in state retirement ages. Much of the debate has focused on the increases in life expectancy since the introduction of state retirement provisions – but life expectancy is not the same for everyone in society. In this edition of Top Charts, Alexandra Sonnenwirth explores this issue and asks whether it’s fair to have a one-size fits all retirement age.

30 March 2023

General interest | Personal blogs

Longevity solved? Erik Pickett meets ChatGPT

With all the recent buzz around the Artificial Intelligence language model, ChatGPT, the Club Vita team were keen to understand how it might help us understand the world of longevity and what limitations may exist when using such a tool. Erik Pickett sets out to “interview” ChatGPT to find out.

28 March 2023