A Re-examination of the Joint Mortality Functions

Heekyung Youn, Arkady Shemyakin, Edwin Herman University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, MN, USA Abstract. Mortality analysis involving multiple lives is easily one of the more complicated aspects in the theory of life contingencies. In this paper, we re-investigate joint mortality functions and in particular, we examine an assertion that relates the joint-life and lastsurvivor random variables. This common assertion states that the sum of the lifetimes of the jointlife and the last-survivor statuses is equal to the sum of the lifetimes of the single statuses. However, we show that this assertion is not precisely correct. We therefore offer a modification to the definitions of the statuses so that this common assertion holds.