Projections Life Table AG2024

Since 2020, we have been dealing with excess mortality due to direct and indirect consequences of the covid-19 pandemic. For the publication of Projections Life Table AG2022, it was decided to base the long-term trend on European data up to and including 2019. For the short term, the expected mortality was corrected with an excess mortality term that reflected the excess mortality of the pandemic in the Netherlands. This excess mortality term is modelled separately with assumptions about the future course of this excess mortality. A similar approach has been adopted in the model for Projections Life Table AG2024. Both tables assume that excess mortality is not permanent and will eventually fade out. This means that in the short term there is a temporary effect due to covid-related mortality, but that in the longer term life expectancy returns back to the historical trend. This historical
trend is based on the data up to and including 2019, so without covid effects.

The uncertainty about when we will die, softens the certainty that we will die.

Since the last publication in September 2022, two years of new mortality data have become available. Observations from this data have shown that there is still excess mortality and that this excess mortality is higher than assumed in AG2022. In the opinion of the Commissie Sterfte Onderzoek (CSO), there is no reason yet to assume that excess mortality is permanent, but the rate at which excess mortality is decreasing has been adjusted downwards. Projections Life Table AG2024 assumes that excess mortality will decrease by 25% every year, whereas in the previous publication it was assumed that excess mortality will halve every year. As in AG2022, it was decided to derive excess mortality from the mortality data in the Netherlands in the two most recent years (now 2022 and 2023). The excess mortality pattern in 2022 and 2023 differs from 2020 and 2021, the first two years of the pandemic. The CSO considers 2022 and 2023 to be the best starting point for the expected development in the coming years, because in the first covid years for example, the effects of the vaccination programs were not yet visible. The model specifications have not been changed.

With regard to the European data, which determine the long-term trend, the CSO has again chosen to use the data up to and including 2019, i.e. the mortality data before covid made its appearance. However, a limited data update for these years will apply, as the sources for mortality data have been updated retroactively.

The above changes mainly have a short-term effect. This is visible in an increase in the one-year mortality rates of females over 55 years of age in the first few projection years. For the long term, the effects are very small. Cohort life expectancy in 2025 will decrease by less than 0.1 years and the effects on pension provisions and contributions will be approximately 0.1% decrease for males and approximately 0.2% decrease for females. The effects increase with age, which means that for a pension fund with mainly retired participants, the effects are slightly larger.