IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2012-170.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Longevity Improvements on U.S. Corporate Defined Benefit Pension Plans

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. John Kiff
  • Michael Kisser
  • Mauricio Soto
  • Mr. S. E Oppers

Abstract

This paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of life expectancy assumptions on the liabilities of private U.S. defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Using detailed actuarial and financial information provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, we construct a longevity variable for each pension plan and then measure the impact of varying life expectancy assumptions across plans and over time on pension plan liabilities. The results indicate that each additional year of life expectancy increases pension liabilities by about 3 to 4 percent. This effect is not only statistically highly significant but also economically: each year of additional life expectancy would increase private U.S. DB pension plan liabilities by as much as $84 billion.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. John Kiff & Michael Kisser & Mauricio Soto & Mr. S. E Oppers, 2012. "The Impact of Longevity Improvements on U.S. Corporate Defined Benefit Pension Plans," IMF Working Papers 2012/170, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2012/170
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=26028
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pablo Antolin, 2007. "Longevity Risk and Private Pensions," Financial Market Trends, OECD Publishing, vol. 2007(1), pages 107-128.
    2. Ronald Lee & Timothy Miller, 2001. "Evaluating the performance of the lee-carter method for forecasting mortality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(4), pages 537-549, November.
    3. Dushi, Irena & Friedberg, Leora & Webb, Tony, 2010. "The impact of aggregate mortality risk on defined benefit pension plans," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(4), pages 481-503, October.
    4. Joelle H. Y. Fong & Olivia S. Mitchell & Benedict S. K. Koh, 2011. "Longevity Risk Management in Singapore's National Pension System," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 78(4), pages 961-982, December.
    5. Robert Novy‐Marx & Joshua Rauh, 2011. "Public Pension Promises: How Big Are They and What Are They Worth?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(4), pages 1211-1249, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cupido, Kyran & Jevtić, Petar & Paez, Antonio, 2020. "Spatial patterns of mortality in the United States: A spatial filtering approach," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 28-38.
    2. Kallestrup-Lamb, Malene & Søgaard Laursen, Nicolai, 2024. "Longevity hedge effectiveness using socioeconomic indices," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 242-251.
    3. Anca-Stefania Jijiie & Jennifer Alonso Garcia & Séverine Arnold (-Gaille), 2019. "Mortality by socio-economic class and its impact on the retirement schemes: How to render the systems fairer?," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/300032, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mitchell, O.S. & Piggott, J., 2016. "Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 865-904, Elsevier.
    2. Yassmin Ali & Ming Fang & Pablo A. Arrutia Sota & Stephen Taylor & Xun Wang, 2019. "Social Security Benefit Valuation, Risk, and Optimal Retirement," Risks, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-31, December.
    3. Joelle H. Fong & John Piggott & Michael Sherris, 2012. "Public Sector Pension Funds in Australia: Longevity Selection and Liabilities," Working Papers 201217, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales.
    4. Rachel WINGENBACH & Jong-Min KIM & Hojin JUNG, 2020. "Living Longer in High Longevity Risk," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(1), pages 47-86, March.
    5. Lanza Queiroz, Bernardo & Lobo Alves Ferreira, Matheus, 2021. "The evolution of labor force participation and the expected length of retirement in Brazil," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    6. Robert Novy-Marx & Joshua D. Rauh, 2012. "Linking Benefits to Investment Performance in US Public Pension Systems," NBER Working Papers 18491, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Lekniūtė, Zina & Beetsma, Roel & Ponds, Eduard, 2019. "U.S. municipal yields and unfunded state pension liabilities," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 15-32.
    8. Li, Han & Hyndman, Rob J., 2021. "Assessing mortality inequality in the U.S.: What can be said about the future?," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 152-162.
    9. Bovenberg, Lans & Nijman, Theo, 2017. "New Dutch pension contracts and lessons for other countries," Other publications TiSEM ed7f9e17-3fda-4db9-a48d-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Andreas G. F. Hoepner & Lisa Schopohl, 2020. "State Pension Funds and Corporate Social Responsibility: Do Beneficiaries’ Political Values Influence Funds’ Investment Decisions?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 489-516, September.
    11. de Jong, Piet & Tickle, Leonie & Xu, Jianhui, 2020. "A more meaningful parameterization of the Lee–Carter model," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 1-8.
    12. Parida Wubulihasimu & Werner Brouwer & Pieter van Baal, 2016. "The Impact of Hospital Payment Schemes on Healthcare and Mortality: Evidence from Hospital Payment Reforms in OECD Countries," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(8), pages 1005-1019, August.
    13. Johann Fuchs & Doris Söhnlein & Brigitte Weber & Enzo Weber, 2018. "Stochastic Forecasting of Labor Supply and Population: An Integrated Model," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 37(1), pages 33-58, February.
    14. Dushi, Irena & Friedberg, Leora & Webb, Tony, 2010. "The impact of aggregate mortality risk on defined benefit pension plans," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(4), pages 481-503, October.
    15. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Pennacchi, George G., 2016. "Discounting pension liabilities: funding versus value," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 254-284, July.
    16. Constantin Anghelache & Alexandru MANOLE & Marius POPOVICI & Emilia STANCIU, 2016. "Statistical analysis of the pensioners condition," Romanian Statistical Review Supplement, Romanian Statistical Review, vol. 64(12), pages 180-186, December.
    17. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2009-015 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Li, Johnny Siu-Hang, 2010. "Pricing longevity risk with the parametric bootstrap: A maximum entropy approach," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 176-186, October.
    19. Ahbab Mohammad Fazle Rabbi & Stefano Mazzuco, 2021. "Mortality Forecasting with the Lee–Carter Method: Adjusting for Smoothing and Lifespan Disparity," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(1), pages 97-120, March.
    20. David Backus & Thomas Cooley & Espen Henriksen, 2013. "Demography and Low-Frequency Capital Flows," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2013, pages 94-102, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Hanno Lustig & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Adrien Verdelhan, 2013. "The Wealth-Consumption Ratio," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(1), pages 38-94.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2012/170. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.