壽命延長及生育率下降使得人口老化日益明顯，成為全球多數國家在21世紀必須面對的議題，由於各區域人口老化的速度不同，必須根據各地特性而調整因應對策。其中研究死亡率變化為面對人口老化的必備課題，尤其是高齡族群的死亡率，這也是近年高齡死亡模型廣受重視的主因之一。因為樣本數與變異數成反比，人口較少的區域或是高齡人口，死亡率的觀察值通常會有較大震盪，為了降低震盪多半會經過修勻，以取得較為穩定的死亡率推估值（王信忠等人，2012）。此外，Li and Lee (2005)的Coherent Lee-Carter模型也是另一種可行方法，透過參考大區域的資訊降低小區域的估計誤差。 本文探討結合上述修勻、死亡率模型的可能，希冀能綜合兩者的優點，提高小區域死亡率推估的精確性。因為Coherent Lee-Carter模型的想法類似增加小區域的人數（加入大區域的人數），本文探討人口數與Lee-Carter模型參數估計值的關係，再以修勻調整大小區域的差異，透過電腦模擬及資料分析，驗證本文提出方法是否有效。其中，仿造王信忠等人的作法，假設小區域與大區域死亡率間的七種可能情境，以平均絕對百分誤差(Mean Absolute Percentage Error)為衡量標準，找出調整修勻、相關模型的方法。另外，本文也以臺灣縣市為研究區域，驗證本文方法的估計結果。研究發現適當地使用修勻方法，可降低小區域的死亡率估計值，其效果優於Coherent Lee-Carter模型。

重大傷病是我國全民健康保險的重要特色之一，透過社會保險的風險分擔機制，病患享有免部分負擔等優惠，降低因為罹病帶來的財務負擔，但重大傷病同時也成為全民健保的主要支出項目。民國102年領取重大傷病證明者不過98餘萬人（約總人口的4%），但其一年的醫療費用多達一千五百多億元（接近總支出的27%），平均每位重大傷病患者的醫療費用約為平均值的7.34倍，其中癌症又是重大傷病中人數最多者，大約佔了49%（資料來源：衛生福利部中央健康保險署）。因為許多重大傷病的發生率、盛行率與年齡成正比（黃泓智等人，2004），未來隨著人口老化，全民健保支出也將跟著上升。 　　本文使用全民健保資料庫，探討近十年重大傷病（尤其是癌症）趨勢，估計重大傷病的年齡別發生率、死亡率，評估人口老化對全民健保造成的影響，其中承保資料檔（ID）、重大傷病檔（HV）為本研究主要的依據資料。而由於健保資料庫的資料種類及數量龐雜，在初期資料的偵錯及處理上非常重要但也相當費時，至於發生率、死亡與否的判斷亦十分棘手，因此過程中我們將一一說明資料分析步驟及注意事項。本文發現癌症及重大傷病的盛行率逐年上升，但發生率並沒有明顯變化，加上近年癌症死亡率幾乎不變（但台灣全體國民的死亡率逐年遞降），因為台灣的人口老化，預期未來罹患癌症人數會逐年增加，癌症將繼續蟬聯十大死因之首，但罹癌死亡率的下降也可發現近年醫療進步所造成的影響。此外，我們也考量隨機死亡模型（Lee-Carter Model），發現無論是癌症死亡率、或是罹癌死亡率都有不錯的估計結果。而在文末也提出癌症病患的就醫行為以供後續研究者參考。 / Catastrophic illness (CI) is one of the key features of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI). Through risk-sharing mechanisms of social insurance, it can reduce the financial burden of the CI patients since treating the CI is usually expensive. However, the CI also becomes a major expenditure item of NHI. The people receiving the CI card are just 0.98 million in 2013 (about 4% of the total population), but their smedical costs are over 150 billion NT dollars (nearly 27% of total expenditures). The average medical cost per CI patient is about 7.34 times of the national average. (Source: Department of Health and National Health Insurance Agency). Because the incidence and prevalence rates increase with age (Huang et al, 2004), the total NHI expenditure is expected to increase in the future due to population aging. This study intends to use the NHI database, including the records of personal identification and out-patient visit from all CI patients, to explore the incidence and mortality rates, for example, of CI patients. Because the NHI database is big and messy, we shall first debug and clean them. Also, since the death of CI patients are not fully reported in the NHI database, we propose a method to identify the deaths and use the official statistics to evaluate. The results show that the prevalence rates of all CI increased every year, but their incidence rates did not change significantly. The mortality rates of cancer patients also did not change much. Based on these findings, we expect the proportion of CI patients and their size will continue to grow. In addition, we applied the Lee-Carter model to the cancer mortality rates, and the fit is pretty good.

La durée de vie humaine augmente dans le monde depuis quelques siècles. Cette augmentation a été plus importante que ne le prédisaient les spécialistes qui ont énoncé des limites. Malgré les incertitudes importantes sur l'avenir de la longévité, la biologie du vieillissement et ses applications semblent en passe de faire chuter les taux de mortalité aux grands âges, similairement à la chute des taux de mortalité infantile il y a 150 ans.L’industrie pharmaceutique prend conscience du potentiel des innovations biomédicales issues de la biologie du vieillissement, rachète des biotechs et développe des équipes en interne. Cela pourrait accélérer l'allongement de la vie.Cependant les tables des actuaires, à l'instar du modèle de type Lee Carter, tendent à prédire une décélération artificielle de la longévité et les risques calculés sont loin de représenter des avancées majeures issues de la biologie du vieillissement.Des modèles de mortalité future sont ici développés sans produire cette décélération. Il apparait qu'une augmentation voisine d'un trimestre par an était jusqu'à présent un meilleur prédicteur que les tendances de chaque pays. D'autres modèles prédisent des accélérations. Nous estimons les impacts sur les retraites.Les efforts pharmaceutiques en cours pour appliquer les résultats de la recherche biomédicale peuvent être craints du fait de leurs impacts sur les retraites. Nous étudions dans quelle mesure un méga fonds de longévité peut à la fois aider à financer les retraites par capitalisation et un grand nombre de développements pharmaceutiques: la mutualisation des risques cliniques permet de capter financièrement des succès biomédicaux liés à la longévité / The human lifespan has been increasing in the world for several centuries. This increase was greater than predicted by specialists who set limits to human age. Despite the significant uncertainties about the future of longevity, the biology of aging and its applications seem about to make old age mortality rates drop, at it happened to infant mortality 150 years ago.The pharmaceutical industry is becoming aware of the potential of biomedical innovations stemming from the biology of aging. It invests in biotechs and develops internal teams. This could accelerate life extension.In parallel, actuarial tables tend to artificially predict longevity decelerations, as for the Lee Carter model, and calculated longevity risks are far from representing major advances from biology of aging.Here, models that do not produce deceleration are developed. It appears that an increase of around one quarter per year was, until now, a better predictor than the trends of each country. Other models predict diverse accelerations, impacts on pensions are analyzed.Current pharmaceutical efforts to apply the results of biomedical research may be feared because of their impact on pensions. Here we study in what measure a longevity megafund can both help finance funded pension schemes and a large number of pharmaceutical developments: the pooling of clinical trial risks can financially capture longevity-related biomedical successes

The aim of my thesis was to collect, compare and evaluate body size, body composition, vital lung capacity, dynamometry and a level of motor performance of men aged from 18 to 25 years of two target groups - men who are professional swimmers or floorball players, and males of a common population. Using standard somatometric methods, a group of 39 swimmers, a group of 39 floorball players, and a group of 39 non-sportsmen of a common population were examined. The examined body parametres were body length, body weight, bustline, arm line, contracted-arm line, forearm line, thigh line, calf line; width of epiphysis of humerus and femur, wrist, ankle, biacromial and bicristal breadth, breadth of the transverse and sagittal section of chest; skin folds. The ascertained data were compared with the results of previous researches. The thesis also includes the results of motor tests, dynamometry and vital lung capacity.

The 1st and 2nd order Lee–Carter methods were compared with the Hyndman–Ullah method in regards to goodness of fit and forecasting ability of mortality rates. Swedish population data was used from the Human Mortality Database. The robust estimation property of the Hyndman–Ullah method was also tested with inclusion of the Spanish flu and a hypothetical scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic. After having presented the three methods and making several comparisons between the methods, it is concluded that the Hyndman–Ullah method is overall superior among the three methods with the implementation of the chosen dataset. Its robust estimation of mortality shocks could also be confirmed.

Studier av livslängder och dödssannolikheter är avgörande för livförsäkring. Betalningar gällande livförsäkringar är helt beroende av om en individ lever eller ej, eller befinner sig i olika hälsotillstånd. För att kunna prissätta premier korrekt och avsätta reserver är det därför av stort intresse att modellera livslängden på ett så korrekt sätt som möjligt. Försäkringsbranschen använder idag historiskt beprövade och välfungerande modeller som går så långt bak i tiden som 200 år. Det finns modeller ännu längre bak i tiden, men de modeller som används idag är främst Gompertz (1826), Makeham (1860) och Lee-Carter (1992). Även om dessa modeller presterar bra är det alltid nödvändigt att undersöka om det kan finnas alternativa modeller som modellerar dödligheten bättre. I detta examensarbete tillämpas affina korträntemodeller för modellering av dödlighetsintensiteten som ligger till grund för flertalet intressanta aktuariella storheter. Då dessa modeller introducerar stokastisk dödlighet kan osäkerheten och beroendet över tid därmed beskrivas. De korträntemodeller som undersöks i arbetet och som är vanligt förekommande inom den finansiella teorin; är Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, Feller och Hull-White. Dessa modeller jämförs sedan mot varandra vad gäller modellerad dödlighetsintensitet samt förväntad återstående livslängd och ettårig dödssannolikhet. En aspekt av stokastisk dödlighetsmodellering som ej återfinns i befintlig litteratur men som undersöks i detta examensarbete är modellering av dödlighet över tid då detta är en av de mest väsentliga aspekterna inom det livförsäkringsmatematiska arbetet. Till sist i valideringssyfte utvärderas samtliga korträntemodeller genom back-testing. Den andra huvudsakliga delen av arbetet består i att generera resultat för samma storheter som ovan baserat på DUS-metoden för att på så sätt jämföra en kommersiell metod mot en mer teoretisk mindre beprövad sådan. Resultaten visar på en stor potential hos flera av korträntemodellerna kontra DUS både vad gäller modellering över åldrar och kalenderår. Däremot är inte resultaten helt felfria för enstaka kalenderår där stora spikar uppstår på grund av parametermässig felanpassning. Modelleringen av korträntemodellerna över tid var över förväntan då modellerna inte är konstruerade för att fånga avtagande trender. Detta är något som kan betraktas som en stor flexibilitet hos korträntemodellerna då de står sig väl mot Lee-Cartermodellen som används i DUS, både vad gäller ålders- och tidsmodellering av dödlighet. / Studies of life expectancy and death probabilities are crucial for life insurance. Payments for life insurance are completely dependent on whether an individual is alive or not, or is in various health conditions. In order to be able to price premiums correctly and set aside reserves, it is therefore of great importance to model life expectancy in the most accurate way possible. The insurance industry today uses historically proven well-functioning models that go as far back in time as 200 years. There are models even further back in time, but the models used today are mainly Gompertz (1826), Makeham (1860) and Lee-Carter (1992). Although these models perform well, it is always necessary to investigate whether there may be alternative models that model mortality better. In this thesis, affine short-term interest rate models are applied for modeling the force of mortality that forms the basis for most interesting actuarial variables. As these models introduce stochastic mortality, the uncertainty and dependence over time can thus be described. The three short-term interest rate models examined in this project, which are common in financial theory; are Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, Feller and Hull-White. These models are then compared against each other in terms of the modeled force of mortality as well as the expected remaining life expectancy and the one-year probability of death. One aspect of stochastic mortality modeling that is not found in the existing literature but which is examined in this thesis is the modeling of mortality over time as this is one of the most important aspects in the life insurance mathematical industry. Finally, for validation purposes, all short-term interest rate models are evaluated using back-testing. The second main part of the work consists of generating results for the same quantities as above based on the DUS method in order to compare a commercial method with more theoretical and less approved ones. The results show a great potential in several of the short-term interest rate models versus DUS both in terms of modeling over ages and calendar years. However, the results are not completely impeccable for individual calendar years where large spikes occur due to inaccurate parameter calibration. The satisfactory modeling of the short-term interest rate models over time was above the expectations as the models are not designed to capture decreasing trends. This is something that can be considered a great flexibility of the short-term interest rate models as they are more or less as accurate as the Lee-Carter model used in DUS, both in terms of age and time modeling of mortality.

The United States, during both the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, pursued humanitarian relief in the Horn of Africa and East Africa with an eye towards Cold War politics. During the Carter administration the focus was on Ethiopia and the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, while during the Reagan administration the United States’ efforts were mainly targeted towards Sudan and the regime of Gaffar Nimeiry. In both instances, the United States was concerned with the politics of the Cold War, trying to create a more positive image of the U.S. abroad by relieving world hunger, while also propping up governments that supported U.S. interests during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Essay 1 (with Juha Alho and Edward Palmer):  All around the world, public pension schemes are moving in the direction of non-financial (NDC) and financial defined contribution (DC) schemes.  Both rely on accurate projections of life expectancy in the creation of annuities. Accurate projections are critical for system stability, individual utility and inter-generational welfare. This paper suggests a path-breaking innovation that changes the perspective from the Lee-carter (LC) family of trend models which assume a constant rate of change in mortality over time. Our approach is to project the cohort life expectancy on basis of the specific cohort rate of change in mortality. This relaxes the strong trend assumption underlying the LC model, which is the reason why LC model does not work well in the phase of accelerating or decelerating mortality. We use unisex mortality data for $8$ countries to test the performance of our approach both ex-post and ex-ante. The ex-post experiment shows that our approach generally performs better when the rate of change in mortality is accelerating and performs as well as LC model when the rate of change is time-invariant. The ex-ante experiment, on the other hand, shows that our model almost always delivers higher projection of remaining life expectancy than the LC model for the more recent cohorts, which is consistent with the ex-post experimental results. / Essay 2:  Due to the systematic underestimation of cohort life expectancy, NDC pension schemes face a financial risk that can leads to inter-generational unfairness, given the current practice. This paper proposes an alternative method of computing annuity to address this problem. The proposal is to adjust the annuity based on re-estimations of the remaining life expectancy at intervals after retirement, but only up to a ceiling age. The scheme is assessed using 208 cohort annuity pools from eight sample countries. This experiment shows that the proposed scheme succeeds in reducing the inter-generational unfairness for 60-80% of the cohort annuity pools, compared to current practice of fixing the annuity at age 65. Because the adjustment is borne by the relatively large group of younger persons, the per capita change in utility is rather small assuming risk neutrality. / Essay 3:  This paper studies how the incentive to retire in a DC (NDC) scheme is influenced by engaging private information on life expectancy. This is an important question since the decisions made under the two scenarios, optimizing using the private life expectancy or the cohort average made available by the pension provider, create different welfare and financial outcomes. The analytical framework is a standard life-cycle model, accounting for monetary gain from work and non-monetary gain from leisure. The unique feature here is that the individual life expectancy is an explicit driver of disutility of work. The theoretical result is that prevailing private information of a longer-than-average life expectancy can lead to both advancing and delaying retirement, depending on other factors determining utility. The numerical example using Swedish data proves the theoretical results and suggests a rather small average impact on the choice of retirement by engaging private information of life expectancy. / Essay 4:   Pensions in the increasingly popular Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) Pay-as-You-Go Schemes are granted based on cohort-specific life expectancy, regardless socioeconomic differences. This risks perverse intra-generational and unintended inter-generational transfers. This paper introduces an alternative with separate annuity pools for different socioeconomic classes. Using unique Swedish data and the Swedish NDC pension system as an example, the analysis shows a significant gap in life expectancy between socioeconomic classes defined by occupation. In the Swedish context, this implies a perverse transfer of 5% of the pension capital from the manual workers to the non-manual workers, which can be abolished by using the group plan. In addition, the group plan also lessens the risk of inter-generational transfers resulting from the gap in life expectancy.

<p>This study concerns the complete oeuvre by the British author Helen Zahavi: Dirty Weekend (1991), True Romance (1994), and Donna and the Fatman (1998). Her novels are here read as a trilogy dealing with the dialectics of gender and violence in 20th century discourse, drawing on theories of how the construction of subjects is produced by power, of the relation between power and sexuality.</p><p>The heroines of Zahavi’s novels try their best to move about in a world where their freedom of movement is limited to their female identity. In Dirty Weekend the protagonist tries to shoot her way out, claiming revenge on every man that is forcing himself upon her. She gains some freedom of movement by refusing subordination, but does not really change the order of power. The protagonist in True Romance instead finds salvation in love of the master. She learns to love the man who keeps her as a sex slave in his apartment, and when confronted with the choice between the freedom by violent action and submission by passive acceptance, she chooses the latter. The protagonist in Donna and the Fatman manage to refuse both superiority and submission. She has a debt to settle with the gangster boss Henry, but in the end blows both herself and her opponent to pieces. I argue that by doing this, Donna breaks out of the order of language. </p><p>The order of power presented in Zahavi’s novels is a tyranneous dichotomy which cathegorize individuals as either victims or perpertrators. This construction is seemingly a natural order which we have to accept, but the actions of Zahavi’s last protagonist eventually proves it to be nothing but a mask, a lie. This lie is, in the words of one of Zahavi’s characters, a tenacious lie, and the only way to break out of the construction of power is to break out of the construction of the order of power. Thus the blowing up of both victim and perpertrator may enable a new world to be born.</p>

The incarceration rate in the United States has increased dramatically in the period since 1945. How did the United States move from having stable incarceration rates in line with global norms to the largest system of incarceration in the world? This study examines the political and intellectual aspects of incarceration and theories of criminal justice by looking at the contributions of journalists, intellectuals and policy makers to the debate on whether the purpose of the justice system is rehabilitation, vengeance, deterrence or incapacitation. This thesis finds that justice and the institution of the prison itself are not immutable facts of modern civilization, but are human institutions vulnerable to the influence of politics, culture and current events.