Subjective Life Expectancy and Private Pensions

Tabea Bucher-Koenen and Sebastian Kluth

VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: One important parameter in the decision process when buying a private annuity is individuals' subjective life expectancy, because it directly infuences the expected rate of return. We examine the market for private annuities in Germany and evaluate potential selection e ects based on subjective life expectancy. First individuals are pessimistic about their life span compared to the o cial life tables. Second we nd a signi cant selection e ect based on subjective life expectancy for women invested in private annuity contracts|so-called Riester pensions. For men there seems to be no di erence in subjective life expectancy by Riester ownership. Comparing the size of this selection e ect with the underlying mark ups in life expectancy that are charged by the insurance industry shows that the latter appears to be in line for women but too high for men. Our ndings have strong policy implications. On the one hand miss-perceptions about longevity risk might prevent individuals from providing su ciently for retirement, on the other hand mandated unisex tari s appear to prevent men from investing in Riester pensions.

JEL-codes: D12 D91 G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-dem
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/79806/1/VfS_2013_pid_798.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc13:79806

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().