The purchase of individual life-annuities: a description of the french institutional setting

J. Ph. and Gaudemet
Additional contact information
J. Ph.: Insee
Gaudemet: Insee

Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers from Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques

Abstract: In addition to the pensions delivered by the mandatory social security system, different schemes offer in France the option to purchase private life annuities. These individual annuities are provided by numerous and heterogeneous institutions that rely on more or less rigorous prudential rules and are subjected to highly disparate fiscal laws. Mortality and financial risks are differently covered whereas the accessiblity to life annuities appears unequal. Undoubtedly this disparity impairs the development of such products: very few individuals purchase private life annuities and the total amount of annuitized financial assets is rather low. Indeed, various restrictive institutional factors tend to strengthen the natural propensity of individuals to favour liquid and transferable assets. Although long term savings benefit from an attractive taxation, it is generally not fiscally advantageous to annuitize the accumulated wealth. Other factors lead to inefficiency on the market for annuities: limitation to competition, constraints on the use of mortality tables favouring adverse selection, restrictive prudential rules.

Keywords: life-annuities; pension schemes; adverse-selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 G23 G28 H31 H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bnsp.insee.fr/ark:/12148/bc6p06zqqq1/f1.pdf Document de travail de la DESE numéro G2001-08 (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:nse:doctra:g2001-08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers from Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by INSEE ().