The (Un)Willingness to Keep Living at Very Advanced Ages

A long life is a general desire that will be reached by more and more people, particularly in developed countries. But the delay of mortality raises important questions about quality of life in the later years. Centenarians have received attention from different disciplines, particularly from demography and genetics, but a psychological approach on whether life at age 100 is perceived as worth living is still very limited. This study explores centenarians’ will to live and associated factors in a sample of 121 centenarians (mean age 101 years; SD 1.63 years; 84.3% female), who answered to a questionnaire comprising sociodemographic characteristics, health status, social functioning, and well-being as well as open questions on their will to live and end-of-life issues. Of the total sample, 31.4% expressed willingness to live longer, 30.6% did not, and 38% presented no clear positioning. From the qualitative thematic analysis, annoyance, uselessness, loss of meaning, disconnection, and loneliness were the most common justifications for being reluctant to live longer. Positive valuation of life and good self-rated health, followed by having a confidant and reduced pain frequency, were the reasons for being willing to live longer. From the quantitative analysis, associated factors of will to live include pain frequency, self-rated health, having a friend confidant and valuation of life. This study provides researchers suggestions for further investigation and highlight the importance of inquiring and understanding very old people’s values and views on their will to live, future wishes, and meaning in life.

On the Market-Consistent Valuation of Participating Life Insurance Heterogeneous Contracts under Longevity Risk

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a market-consistent valuation of life insurance participating liabilities sold to a population of partially heterogeneous customers under the joint impact of biometric and financial risk. In particular, the heterogeneity between groups of policyholders stems from their offered minimum interest rate guarantees and contract maturities. We analyse the effects of these features on the company’s insolvency while embracing the insurer’s goal to achieve the same expected return for different cohorts of policyholders. Within our extensive numerical analyses, we determine the fair participation rates and other key figures, and discuss the implications for the stakeholders, taking account of various degrees of conservativeness of the insurer when pricing the contracts.

The Reciprocal Generalized Inverse Gaussian Frailty with Application in Life Annuity Business

Aims: As shown in literature, several authors have adopted various individual frailty mixing distributions as a way of dealing with possible heterogeneity due to unobserved covariates in a group of insurers. This research contribution is to generalize the frailty mixing distribution to nest other classes of frailty distributions not in literature and apply the proposed distributions in valuation of life annuity business. Methodology: A simulation study is done to assess the performance of the aforementioned models. The baseline parameters is estimated using Bayesian Inference and a better model is suggested for valuation of life annuity business. Results: As a result of generalizing the frailty some new classes of frailty distributions are constructed such as; the Reciprocal Inverse Gaussian Frailty, the Inverse Gamma Frailty, the Harmonic Frailty and the Positive Hyperbolic Frailty. From the simulation study, the proposed new frailty models shows that ignoring frailty leads to an underestimation of future residual lifetime since the survival curve shifts to the right when heterogeneity is accounted for. This is consistent with frailty literature. The Reciprocal Inverse Gaussian model closely represents the Association of Kenya Insurers graduated rates with a slight increase in survival due to longevity risk. Conclusion: The proposed new frailty models show an increase in the insurers expected liability when unobserved heterogeneity is accounted for. This is consistent with frailty literature and thus can be applied to avoid underestimating the insurer’s liability in the context of life annuity business. The RIG model as proposed in estimating future liability by directly adjusting the AKI mortality rates shows an increase in longevity risk. The extent of heterogeneity of the insured group determines the level of risk. The RIG frailties should be considered for multivariate cases where the insureds are clustered in groups.

To-Day and To-Morrow, Cultural Studies, and Everyday Life

Taking up the suggestion at the end of Chapter 4, this one proposes that an important effect of the concerted futurological project was to place a novel emphasis in the series on everyday life; and that this in turn contributed to the development—already in embryo—of cultural and media studies. After a discussion of these emerging disciplines, volumes are analysed dealing with advertising, the press, communication and travel, the home and the family, law, the environment, and leisure. A key volume in this discussion is C. E. M. Joad’s Diogenes; or, The Future of Leisure (1928), which moves wittily between a satire of contemporary pastimes and a consideration—via G. B. Shaw’s ‘metabiological’ suite of plays, Back to Methusaleh, of a possible evolutionary future that informs the one imagined by Bernal. The chapter ends by discussing the volumes on labour and sport, and concluding that the series’ vision of everyday life is one profoundly conditioned by the experience of the recent war as giving a new valuation of life in all its forms.

“EARTHQUAKE WILL PASS, AND THE LIFE WILL GO ON”: A CRITICAL READING OF PUBLIC SPOTS OF DASK

Neoliberal governmentality encourages individuals to value their life as a proper(ty). The neoliberal valuation of life embraces ‘self-responsible’ and ‘competitive’ individuals. Drawing on the contingency of life, neoliberal governmentality intervenes in affects to govern individuals. For instance, individuals are made anxious by the insecurity, vulnerability and ambiguity about the unintended consequences of what may happen to them. In this study, we address how Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool/‘Natural Disaster Insurance Institution’ (Doğal Afet Sigortaları Kurumu—hereafter, DASK) intervenes in affects for neoliberal valuation of life as proper(ty). With an interpretive, a post-structuralist and a critical management approach, we examine and analyze the content of the public spots of DASK through the lens of neoliberal governmentality. Accordingly, these public spots portray the victims of Van earthquake as ‘compulsory guests’ and problematise being a compulsory guest. We remark that the compulsory guests do not feel at home at their relatives’ homes. Within the neoliberal precarization process to foster responsible subjects, DASK portrays the uneasiness—or properness—of compulsory guests through hopes, anxieties and fears so that individuals are encouraged to get their compulsory earthquake insurance to avoid being a compulsory guest.