Bernstein's Against the Gods (1996) independently corroborates that Price's Northampton table underestimated life expectancy, to the Equitable Society's benefit

actuarial-historyinsurancemortality-tableshistorical-demographyrichard-pricesource-verification

Peter L. Bernstein's popular history of risk and probability, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (John Wiley & Sons, 1996), states of the actuary constructing the mortality table discussed in that section of the book — context strongly indicates Richard Price and the Northampton table, discussed elsewhere in the same chapter, though the pronoun's antecedent is not visible in the single passage recovered — "Most serious, he appears to have underestimated life expectancies, with the result that the life-insurance premiums were much higher than they needed to be. The Equitable Society flourished on this error."

This is independent of, and corroborates the direction of, the Hacking/Zelizer-sourced Wikipedia claim behind claim-price-northampton-table-overestimated-mortality-favouring-insurers: understating life expectancy (equivalently, overestimating mortality) inflated life-assurance premiums beyond what a truer table would have required, to the insurer's benefit.

The passage was recovered only via a reader's Kindle-highlight transcription of Bernstein's book (Goodreads), not the book itself — recorded here at the tier that access path actually supports, not the tier the underlying book (a Tier 2–3 popular financial history with its own endnote apparatus) might earn if read directly. The claim's direction is historical and uncontested (Tier 3–4 acceptable for that), but its specificity edges toward mechanism, so it carries [unverified-mechanism — needs primary] pending a direct read of Bernstein or of Price's own Observations on Reversionary Payments (1771/72), tracked at question-verify-northampton-table-overestimated-mortality-primary. The same passage's next sentence complicates rather than confirms the claim's annuity-side incidence — see the 2026-08-24 addendum on claim-price-northampton-table-overestimated-mortality-favouring-insurers.