EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Longevity Insurance Benefits for Social Security: International Experience

John A. Turner, Gerard Hughes, Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak () and David M. Rajnes ()
Additional contact information
John A. Turner: Pension Policy Center
Gerard Hughes: Trinity Business School, University of Dublin
Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak: Warsaw School of Economics
David M. Rajnes: Social Security Administration

Chapter Chapter 9 in Economic Challenges of Pension Systems, 2020, pp 193-210 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Longevity insurance benefits are deferred annuities that start payment at an advanced age at which a substantial proportion of the birth cohort has died. In high-income countries, that would mean that these annuities would start for people in their early 80s, but when social security programs were starting in many countries, the age at which longevity insurance annuities would start was substantially younger. Originally, public pension programs in a number of countries were structured as a longevity insurance program, with roughly 50% of those entering the workforce surviving to receive the benefits because of relatively high benefit eligibility ages. Over time, however, as life expectancy has improved, the benefits these programs provide have slowly transformed into benefits that most people entering the work force ultimately receive. This paper argues that reintroduction of a longevity insurance benefit as part of public pensions could be an important policy in particular because this benefit is generally not provided by the private sector. These annuities would benefit some older retirees, particularly in countries with modest public pension benefits, but the private sector has problems in providing them, particularly when they must be provided on a unisex basis. This chapter surveys countries that provide this type of benefit and also considers proposals for the provision of this benefit in the United States and Canada. The addition of these benefits to social security may be particularly desirable as part of a reform where other changes being made to maintain solvency are resulting in reduced generosity of benefits.

Keywords: Annuities; Canada; China; Insurance; India; Ireland; Life expectancy; Longevity; Nepal; Old age; Public pensions; Poland; Social security; United States; Vietnam; Zanzibar (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-37912-4_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030379124

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-37912-4_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-37912-4_9