Hoffman was statistician for the Prudential Insurance Company of America. This work, "Hoffman's first, characterized African Americans as exceptionally disease-prone. The work was motivated by a concern about issues of race, and also the need of insurance companies to justify the higher life insurance premiums charged to African Americans. An 1897 critique of this work by Kelly Miller in occasional papers of the American Negro Academy of Washington, D.C., pointed out sampling problems with the 1890 census, which was the statistical basis of the work, and that there were insufficient adjustments for environmental factors" (Wikipedia article on Frederick Ludwig Hoffman, accessed 2-2020).

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.