This paper contrasts consumer choice under uncertain lifetimes with the behavior that would arise if each individual's lifetime were announced at birth. In a model that includes life insurance and excludes investments in human capital, the expected utility under uncertain lifetimes exceeds that under known lifetimes when the latter expectation is based on preannouncement survival probabilities. This conclusion emerges, first, because the model without human capital contains no planning benefits from knowledge of the horizon and, second, because the prior announcement of lifetimes forces risk-averse consumers to undertake an extra gamble that they could otherwise avoid by using life insurance. This paper explores the role of uncertain lifetimes in an intertemporal model of consumer choice. The analysis compares the behavior of consumption and utility under a stochastic horizon with that which would arise under certainty where each individual's length of life is announced at birth. In a model that includes life insurance and excludes investments in human capital, the expected utility under uncertain lifetimes exceeds the expected utility under known lifetimes when the latter expectation is based on preannouncement (ex ante) survival probabilities. This conclusion emerges, first, because the model without human capital accumulation contains no planning benefits from knowledge of the horizon; and, second, because the prior announcement of the time of death forces riskaverse consumers to undertake an extra gamble that could have been avoided by the use of life insurance in the uncertainty case. The possibility of accumulating human capital implies planning benefits from knowledge of the time of death. The ability to match investments with the horizon implies that expected lifetime wealth is lower in the case of uncertain lifetime than in the case where lifetimes are