The Social Security Advisory Board has commissioned an expert panel to review the assumptions and methods used by Social Security trustees in their annual report on the program’s financial status.

It’s the fifth time since 1999 that the board has done so.

The panel will be composed of actuaries, demographers and economists, and will convene for the first time on Nov. 21. The 2015 Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods will analyze how economic and demographic trends will affect Social Security’s long-term solvency. It is expected to deliver the final report on its findings next fall.

Also read: Social Security benefits to go up by 1.7%

“The nation relies on these projections for measuring the status of the nation’s most important social insurance program and for evaluating proposed reforms,” said Henry J. Aaron, chair of the board, in a statement. “It is vital that these projections embody the best possible data and methods.”

The 2011 panel, the last to be convened prior to this one, made recommendations in a number of areas, from methods and assumptions used to calculate data to the way the data are presented.

Among the areas for which the technical panel suggested actions were simplifying mortality projections; increasing life expectancy assumptions; changing the way net immigration is calculated; increasing the level of detail on factors driving disability benefit applications; changing assumptions and methods surrounding labor force participation rates, the real wage growth rate, the unemployment rate, interest rates, inflation, and the taxable share of covered wages.

Chairing the latest technical panel will be Alicia Munnell, the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management and director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Munnell is a former member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and vice president and research director at the Boston Federal Reserve.

Also read: US retirement system just average globally

Other panel members are:

Dr. Katharine Abraham, professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the Maryland Population Research Center and formerly commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Dr. David Autor, professor and associate department head of the MIT Department of Economics, formerly editor of The Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Dr. Jeff Brown, William G. Karnes Professor of Finance and director of the Center for Business and Public Policy at the University of Illinois and formerly member of the Social Security Advisory Board.

Dr. Peter Diamond, Institute Professor (emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recipient of the Economic Sciences prize in memory of Alfred Nobel, and formerly president of the American Economic Association.

Dr. Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Development of the American Economy program, formerly president of the American Economic Association and the Economic History Association.

Sam Gutterman, retired as director and consulting actuary at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and formerly president of the Society of Actuaries.

Dr. Ron Rindfuss, research professor of sociology and Carolina Population Center Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, formerly president of the Population Association of America.

Michael Teitelbaum, senior research associate in the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program, formerly vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and formerly vice chair and acting chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.

Joe Silvestri, retirement research actuary at the Society of Actuaries, formerly vice-president, Aon Hewitt.

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Taking a closer look at Social Security assumptions

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