Mortality of Indian Assured Lives

Extract

It is not without some feeling of diffidence that a Paper on the results of an Investigation into the Mortality of Lives Assured with the Oriental Government Security Life Assurance Co., Ltd., conducted jointly by the Actuary, Mr. Douglas Forrest, F.F.A., and the author is submitted. The Journal is more or less barren of Papers relating to the Mortality of Native Indian Assured Lives, though the subject of Indian mortality has often been considered by members of this Institute. Reference might be made in this connection to the investigations of Messrs. S. C. Thomson (T.F.A., vol. i) and A. T. Winter (J.I.A., vol. xliii) on the subject of the Mortality of Indian Assured Lives, but these being based on scanty data, the results must always be accepted with caution. Mr. Arthur Hunter's contribution (J.I.A., vol. lvii) relating to the experience of the Lives Assured with the New York Life Insurance Company from 1885–1921, touches on several points of interest and sounds a strong note of pessimism as follows : “The Mortality among natives of India insured by “our Company has not improved in the later over the earlier “years of observation” and “it is difficult to conceive that the “great increase in knowledge and the improvements in “sanitation have not affected the health of the middle and the “upper classes of India in the same way as they have affected “other (tropical) countries (such as Cuba, Brazil, Chile and “Porto Rico), although possibly not to the same extent.”