A critique of fractional age assumptions

Published mortality tables are usually calibrated to show the survival function of the age at death distribution at exact integer ages. Actuaries make fractional age assumptions when valuing payments that are not restricted to integer ages. A fractional age assumption is essentially an interpolation between integer age values which are accepted as given. Three fractional age assumptions have been widely used by actuaries. These are the uniform distribution of death (UDD) assumption, the constant force assumption and the hyperbolic or Balducci assumption. Under all three assumptions, the interpolated values of the survival function between two consecutive ages depend only on the survival function at those ages. While this has the advantage of simplicity, all three assumptions result in force of mortality and probability density functions with implausible discontinuities at integer ages. In this paper, we examine some families of fractional age assumptions that can be used to correct this problem. To help in choosing specific fractional age assumptions and in comparing different sets of assumptions, we present an optimality criterion based on the length of the probability density function over the range of the mortality table. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.