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. 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.
    2. 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.
    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. Pablo Antolin, 2007. "Longevity Risk and Private Pensions," Financial Market Trends, OECD Publishing, vol. 2007(1), pages 107-128.
    5. 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.
    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. 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. 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.
    4. 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.
    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. Booth, Heather, 2006. "Demographic forecasting: 1980 to 2005 in review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 547-581.
    7. Rob Hyndman & Heather Booth & Farah Yasmeen, 2013. "Coherent Mortality Forecasting: The Product-Ratio Method With Functional Time Series Models," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(1), pages 261-283, February.
    8. Fuchsman, Dillon & McGee, Josh B. & Zamarro, Gema, 2023. "Teachers’ willingness to pay for retirement benefits: A national stated preferences experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    9. Hári, Norbert & De Waegenaere, Anja & Melenberg, Bertrand & Nijman, Theo E., 2008. "Estimating the term structure of mortality," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 492-504, April.
    10. Dan Goldhaber & Cyrus Grout, 2016. "Pension Choices and the Savings Patterns of Public School Teachers," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 11(4), pages 449-481, Fall.
    11. Shawn Ni & Michael Podgursky, 2016. "How Teachers Respond to Pension System Incentives: New Estimates and Policy Applications," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(4), pages 1075-1104.
    12. Niels Haldrup & Carsten P. T. Rosenskjold, 2019. "A Parametric Factor Model of the Term Structure of Mortality," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-22, March.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. Fuchsman, Dillon & McGee, Josh & Zamarro, Gema, 2022. "Teachers’ Knowledge and Preparedness for Retirement: Results from a Nationally Representative Teacher Survey," Working Papers 21-5, Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research, Saint Louis University.
    16. 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.
    17. Kim, Dongwoo & Koedel, Cory & Xiang, P. Brett, 2021. "The trade-off between pension costs and salary expenditures in the public sector," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 151-168, January.
    18. 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.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    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.