January 2023

US. Life expectancy can have a greater impact than even record high inflation on how long your retirement savings will last

Given today’s ongoing high inflation, many Americans worry they may not have put away enough money for retirement. They fear that sharp increases in food and energy prices and transportation and medical care costs could significantly affect their retirement savings. Yet there’s another important factor to consider: your life expectancy. A new report from the TIAA Institute and George Washington University reveals that more than half of American adults don’t know how long people generally tend to live in retirement, which...

Life expectancy in the U.S. has declined. What does that mean for your retirement?

Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its most recent U.S. life expectancy estimates, and sadly, the report found that, once again, Americans’ average number of years remaining have fallen. As reported recently, life expectancy at birth is now 76.4 years (as of 2021), down from 77 a year earlier. This is a drop of approximately 7 months over a one-year period, which takes life expectancy back almost a quarter-century to 1996. This decline is certainly...

December 2022

US. Corporate pension buyouts reach $26 billion in Q3 — LIMRA survey

U.S. corporate pension plan buyout sales totaled $26.1 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30, the highest volume for a third quarter, a LIMRA survey found. It also brings the year-to-date volume of buyout sales to $41 billion, breaking the previous annual record of $36 billion in 2012 in just the first three quarters of the year. LIMRA projects the total volume for 2022 will exceed $50 billion. The third quarter was highlighted by the second-largest U.S. pension buyout transaction in...

November 2022

Portuguese seniors’ life expectancy decreased again, provisional results show. It determines pension age for 2024

Statistic Portugal published on November 29 the provisional value of life expectancy at age 65 for the three-year period 2020-2022. Every year this estimates has an influence on pensions in Portugal. Life expectancy at age 65 in Portugal is estimated at 19.30 years for the triennium 2020-2022. Different from life expectancy at birth, this means Portuguese at age 65 between 2020 and 2022 could expect to live until 84 years and 110 days on average. It decreased 0.05 year compared...

Canada. Are longevity fund solutions going to change the retirement income game?

Over the past few years, Canada’s investment fund industry has sought to revolutionize Canada’s retirement-planning landscape with the introduction of innovative products. In 2021, Purpose Investments launched the Longevity Pension Fund, while Guardian Capital introduced its own GuardPath Longevity Solutions earlier this year. While they don’t offer estate-planning guarantees, both go beyond the scope of traditional mutual funds by tapping into mortality credits, an idea that was first explored through the use of tontines in the 16th century. As the fund...

Global population hits 8 billion, doubling in 48 years

The world’s population has reached 8 billion, up by one billion in just 11 years since the population hit 7 billion in 2011. On Tuesday, the UNDP announced that the world’s population had hit 8 billion. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that it is a “milestone in human development,” and that this is an “occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity’s shared responsibility for the planet.” Since 1974, when the global population first exceeded 4 billion,...

October 2022

The Effect of Removing Early Retirement on Mortality

By Cristina Bellés-Obrero, Sergi Jimenez-Martin & Han Ye This paper sheds new light on the mortality effect of delaying retirement by investigating the impacts of the 1967 Spanish pension reform. This reform exogenously changed the early retirement age, depending on the date individuals started contributing to the Social Security system. Those contributing before 1 January 1967 maintained the right to voluntarily retire early (at age 60), while individuals who started contributing after that date could not voluntarily claim a pension...

July 2022

The Role of Longevity Annuities in Different Socioeconomic Classes: A Canadian Case Study

By Rui Zhou, Johnny Siu‐Hang Li & Kenneth Zhou A longevity annuity is a deeply deferred annuity which begins payments very late in life. By transferring some of the risk of outliving retirement savings at advanced ages to annuity providers, longevity annuities provide retirees with enhanced later-life financial security. This paper aims to investigate the impact of longevity annuity provision on retirement income planning for Canadians, on the basis of the tax rules and retirement system in Canada. The research...

June 2022

South Korea saw biggest natural population decline for the month of April

The number of deaths in South Korea recorded in April rose to an all-time high for that month. According to Statistics Korea, in April, there were almost 37-thousand deaths, which was a whopping 46.3 percent increase from a year earlier. As for the number of births, it was the 77th month in a row almost six-and-a-half years straight that the number of babies born has declined. Births came in at a little over 21-thousand, which was down 7 percent from a year...

April 2022

The Causal Effects of Place on Health and Longevity

The Causal Effects of Place on Health and Longevity

By Tatyana Deryugina & David Molitor Life expectancy varies substantially across local regions within a country, raising conjectures that place of residence affects health. However, population sorting and other confounders make it difficult to disentangle the effects of place on health from other geographic differences in life expectancy. Recent studies have overcome such challenges to demonstrate that place of residence substantially influences health and mortality. Whether policies that encourage people to move to places that are better for their health...