A New Approach to Infant and Juvenile Mortality

Considerable space is devoted in the literature of this Society to the problems of evaluating the rights of survivors under the benefit provisions of various Workmen’s Compensation statutes. By the very nature of the problem of industrial deaths, survivors are, in a great majority of the cases, widows and orphans. In treating of the life expectancy of orphans, the Casualty Actuary is confronted with the use of life contingency functions developed by the Life Actuary whose primary concern is with individuals who have arrived at maturity or are very close thereto. There is no satisfactory analytical expression for mortality with respect to infants and juveniles. Values for the various life functions at these ages are, at best, non-analytical and highly empirical. When the problem of multiple-life contingencies is superimposed upon this situation, the difficulties encountered by the Casualty Actuary in measuring the value of orphans’ benefits become considerable.