mortalitystatistics

Mortality Statistics of Insured Wage Earners
United States and Canada, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
(C) Copyright 1919

This is a report of the mortality statistics from Met Life for Canada and the U.S., from 1911 to 1919. That sounds rather cut and dried, but it’s much more than that.

Each condition is discussed in some detail as well as the methodology used to calculate the numbers. That’s where it gets interesting. Not only are some of the factors still with us today, but as you’d imagine, some of the factors really aren’t a consideration anymore. Deaths by malaria in Canada and the US? I can’t image that’s a useable statistic.

Now what may be really eye opening for some people (and don’t shoot the messenger) is that Met Life broke the numbers down not just by sex (male and female) but by white and colored. Yes, in days gone by insurance companies used to rate baced on race.

In addition, they didn’t break the stats down by smoking/non-smoking. You could smoke a pack a day and not worry about your life insurance rates. Nowadays if you smoke you can expect to double your life insurance rates.