“Welfare Gains and Annuities Demand”

Abstract

This paper extends the annuity demand theory, giving new reasons for the small annuities demand. Regarding this problem, Yaari (1965) claims, under the condition that no one can die in debt, that a selfish consumer will fully annuitized her savings, insofar as annuity asset yield dominate conventional assets yield. However, we demonstrated mathematically that, in a standard life-cycle model, when borrowings are unconstrained and financial markets are complete, a selfish consumer may prefer not to annuitize her savings. In addition, we analyze the desire to purchase annuities according to the risk aversion coefficient and wealth composition.Annuities Demand; Complete Markets; Myopic-selfish Behavior; Life-cycle Model