MODERN BASIS OF LIFE INSURANCE. 633 



While the two experience tables are very similar, and represent 

 about the same social conditions, the well-to-do middle classes, in this 

 country and in England, the American table has a peculiarity char- 

 acteristic of life in the United States. At the younger ages, up to 

 thirty years, the mortality is greater, while from thirty to seventy 

 years it is somewhat less than in England. During this latter, the 

 most active period of life, the strain upon the system is very great in 

 this country, and the vital forces are used up to such an extent that 

 after seventy years the death-rate rises rapidly. The table ends at 

 ninety-five, while the English is carried to ninety-nine. It may also 

 be mentioned here that female life has proved less favorable than 

 male life to insurance companies, while it will be remembered that the 

 very reverse has been observed in the community at large. The next 

 point that will attract attention is, that the English life table, repre- 

 senting the average life of the whole population, does not range so 

 much above the insurance tables as might be supposed. Insurance 

 companies select only healthy individuals by medical examination, and 

 almost exclusively from the better classes and occupations. Why, 

 then, is the difference not greater? Some of the reasons can be 

 readily given. First, there is a constant effort on the part of the pub- 

 lic to foist impaired lives upon the insurers. No amount of care or 

 precaution can detect all misrepresentation or trace every inducement 

 to fraud and self-destruction, and, while it may amount to less than 

 some assume, it undoubtedly reduces the standard of absolute health. 

 Of far greater importance is the observation that the effect of selec- 

 tion nearly wears away in about five years. Taking a class of live? 

 selected by medical examination, say at twenty-five years, it will show 

 a reduced mortality during the first year ; but after five years, at age 

 thirty, very nearly the usual average is again reached. For, while the 

 diseased are excluded from the selected class, a certain number of these 

 sound lives will find their health to fail from year to year. Were 

 those admitted at twenty-five years to be reexamined at age thirty, 

 so Taany sick and ailing would be among them that the advantages of 

 selection would be found to have largely disappeared. 



Registrar - General Farr estimates 27 out of 1,000 of the whole 

 population, between the ages of twenty and sixty, to suffer from some 

 kind of disease or other, be it hereditary, chronic, recurrent, or acute. 

 Consumption, he thinks, though varied in duration, seems to average 

 about two years. The higher the age, the greater the value of selec- 

 tion ; and, the older the members of a life-insurance company be- 

 come, the more do they approximate the health of the community 

 at large. 



Another factor that operates as a selection against the mortality 

 experience is what is called lapses. A larg3 number of policies are 

 constantly allowed to terminate through the indifference of the insured, 

 and for various other reasons. But, while the healthy often forfeit 



