Is this just a point based on age and a standard decline?
Table for reference: [https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)
BING!
In: 1
Think of them like betting lines from a sports book.
Life insurance is basically a gamble: You’re saying, “I bet I’ll die within the terms of my policy,” and the insurance company is saying, “I bet you won’t.” The actuarial tables give the odds of the bet; the payout amount in combination with the odds sets your wager (or premium). If you win and die, then the insurance company will pay you (or more likely, your beneficiaries, since dead people tend not to need much money). If you lose and survive, then the insurance company gets to keep your premiums without giving you anything.
As for the tables themselves: They’re a proprietary statistical engine that factors in large amounts of data to figure out how likely a given person is to die within a given amount of time. To know exactly how they work, we would need to know all of the factors that went into them, and how heavily the insurance company weighed each of those factors. Given that these tables are literally how the life insurance companies make money, they are not terribly forthcoming with the details. Age and gender obviously go into it, as do weight, height, medical history, leisure activities and much more.
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