No. II. Doctor Price's Tables. TABLE I. Shewing the Weekly Allowances during Incapacities of Labour produced by Sickness or Accidents; and the corresponding Weekly Contributions necessary to entitle Persons to those Allowances. N. B. The Ages in this and the following Tables, are the Ages at Admission; and the Contributions at Admission are reckoned to continue invariable till they cease at fixty-five. Suppositions on which this Table is formed. First, That in societies consisting of persons under thirty-two years of age, a forty-eighth part of them will be always in a state of incapacitation by illness and accidents; and therefore entitled to allowances proportioned to their contributions. Various reasons, and particularly the experience of friendly clubs, determine me to believe that the proportion of the sick to the well in such a society will not be so great as this, and consequently that a weekly allowance during sickness will be more than supported by weekly contributions not exceeding a forty-eighth part of that allowance. Secondly, It is supposed that from the age of thirty-two to forty-two, this proportion increases to one quarter more than a forty-eighth part; from forty-three to fifty-one to one-half more; from fifty-two to fifty-eight to three quarters more; and from fifty-nine to fixty-four to double. The reason of assuming this rate of increase is, that the probability of the duration of human life decreases after thirty nearly in this manner, or so that a person of the age of sixty has but half the probability of living any given time that a person at thirty-two has, and consequently must be then doubly subject to the causes that produce sickness and mortality. |