Actuarial approaches to pension schemes

Do pension schemes which are referred to as “assessment schemes” or, to be more precise, those which provide for and take into account the adjustment of pensions, need the contribution of actuarial science? If so, what is its function? These questions were raised in the early 1930s by Albert Thomas, Director of the ILO, and his colleagues, especially by Adrien Tixier, Chief of the Social Insurance Section (later a Division). Since then, they have been the subject of extensive and remarkably high‐level discussion. In this article, one of the people who contributed most to this discussion gives his personal answer to this question and bases it on the use of tables showing projections. Through its Permanent Committee of Actuaries and Statisticians, the ISSA has devoted great efforts to studying “demographic and financial projections in social security”. The subject remains on this Committee's programme of work and in going into it more thoroughly, the Committee proposes to limit itself to the invalidity, old‐age and death risks. The present article forms part of this research work: it concentrates on schemes which provide for the adjustment of pensions.