Tax incentives for private life annuities and the social security reform: Effects on consumption and on adverse selection

Susanne Pech ()

No 2002-09, Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: In this paper we analyse several measures which are typically included in a social security reform: a cut in the social security benefits, an increase in the social security tax and tax incentives for the purchase of private life annuities, which have recently become quite popular at the political level. In a two-period model with uncertainty about life-expectancy, it is shown that for a given annuity price tax incentives for life annuities increases consumption expenditures in old-age, while the opposite occurs by a cut in the social security benefits and by an increase of the social security tax. The main result is that a tax incentive for life annuities and a cut in the social security benefits alleviate adverse selection in the private annuity market, while an increase in the social security tax exacerbates adverse selection.

Keywords: annuity market; uncertain lifetime; adverse selection; tax incentives; social security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 D91 G22 H24 H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2002/wp0209.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:jku:econwp:2002_09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by René Böheim ().