IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1040.html

Life Insurance Savings and the After-Tax Life Insurance Rate of Return

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Warshawsky

Abstract

This paper presents a calculation of the time series of the after-tax rate of return to whole life insurancy. When compared to the after-tax return on an alternative portfolio of similar risk, more than 60%of the decline in life insurance savings (suitably defined) in the past two decades can be attributed to a widening after-tax rate of return differen-tial.Both the existence and importance of this result depend on the characteristics of life insurance savings. Life insurance saving is intimately connected to life insurance coverage and therefore is long-term and quasi-contractual in nature. Furthermore (and, in part, because of the above characteristics), the interest earned on the fixed income portfolio of life insurance intermediaries has been taxed under a special set of rules. From 1958 to 1981,these rules have taken the rather complicated form of the Menge formula. This formula is very sensitive to changes in nominal interest rate levels and in particular, during inflationary periods it acts so as to dramatically increase the tax burden of life insurancesavings.Life insurance savings is therefore an example of the non-neutrality of monetary policy. This is important for studies of flow of funds and capital accumulation using the historical record.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Warshawsky, 1982. "Life Insurance Savings and the After-Tax Life Insurance Rate of Return," NBER Working Papers 1040, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1040
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1040.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Rothschild & Joseph Stiglitz, 1976. "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(4), pages 629-649.
    2. Riley, John G, 1979. "Informational Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 331-359, March.
    3. Thaler, Richard H & Shefrin, H M, 1981. "An Economic Theory of Self-Control," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(2), pages 392-406, April.
    4. Martin Feldstein, 1982. "The Fiscal Framework of Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 0966, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Friedman, Benjamin M, 1982. "Effects of Shifting Saving Patterns on Interest Rates and Economic Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(1), pages 37-62, March.
    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. Martin Feldstein & Joosung Jun, 1987. "The Effects of Tax Rules on Nonresidential Fixed Investment: Some Preliminary Evidence from the 1980s," NBER Chapters, in: The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation, pages 101-162, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Noldeka, G. & Samuelson, L., 1994. "Learning to Signal in Market," Working papers 9409, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    2. Tomas Philipson & John Cawley, 1999. "An Empirical Examination of Information Barriers to Trade in Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 827-846, September.
    3. Bidénam Kambia-Chopin, 2003. "Coûts de l’autoprotection et équilibre d’un marché de l’assurance concurrentiel," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 79(3), pages 327-347.
    4. Azevedo, Eduardo M. & Gottlieb, Daniel, 2019. "An example of non-existence of Riley equilibrium in markets with adverse selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 152-157.
    5. Inderst, Roman & Wambach, Achim, 2001. "Competitive insurance markets under adverse selection and capacity constraints," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(10), pages 1981-1992, December.
    6. Arguedas, Carmen & Rousseau, Sandra, 2012. "Learning about compliance under asymmetric information," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 55-73.
    7. Garcia, Daniel & Tsur, Matan, 2021. "Information design in competitive insurance markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    8. Maier, Andreas, 2010. "Immobilienverzehrprodukte: Potenzielle Profiteure und Nachfragehemmnisse," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 115, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    9. Peter, Richard & Richter, Andreas & Thistle, Paul, 2017. "Endogenous information, adverse selection, and prevention: Implications for genetic testing policy," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 95-107.
    10. Wanda Mimra & Christian Waibel, 2025. "Contracting Environments and Efficiency in Markets with Hidden Information: An Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 35-74, August.
    11. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    12. Polo, Alberto & Taburet, Arthur & Vo, Quynh-Anh, 2025. "Screening using a menu of contracts: A structural model for lending markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    13. Puelz, Robert & Snow, Arthur, 1994. "Evidence on Adverse Selection: Equilibrium Signaling and Cross-Subsidization in the Insurance Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(2), pages 236-257, April.
    14. Daron Acemoglu & Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2012. "Dynamics and Stability of Constitutions, Coalitions, and Clubs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1446-1476, June.
    15. Lengwiler, Yvan & Rishabh, Kumar, 2017. "Credit from the Monopoly Bank," Working papers 2017/15, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    16. Richard Peter & Andreas Richter & Petra Steinorth, 2016. "Yes, No, Perhaps? Premium Risk and Guaranteed Renewable Insurance Contracts With Heterogeneous Incomplete Private Information," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 83(2), pages 363-385, June.
    17. Hindriks, Jean & De Donder, Philippe, 2003. "The politics of redistributive social insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(12), pages 2639-2660, December.
    18. Torben M. Andersen, 2024. "Hedging mortality risk over the life‐cycle—The role of information and borrowing constraints," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(4), pages 1449-1466, October.
    19. Benjamin Hemingway, 2022. "Banking Regulation and Collateral Screening in a Model of Information Asymmetry," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 367-405, June.
    20. Wanda Mimra & Achim Wambach, 2011. "A Game-Theoretic Foundation for the Wilson Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets with Adverse Selection," CESifo Working Paper Series 3412, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:1040. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.