Retirement Income: Risks and Strategies
本书探讨退休储蓄风险与策略，分析为何老年人少买长寿或长期护理保险，并提出结合年金与护理保险的产品以降低逆向选择，适合研究退休金融的学者。
Retirement Income: Risks and Strategies, by Mark Warshawsky, 2011, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 280 pp. ISBN: 978-0-26201-693-3. Retirement Income: Risks and Strategies contains a collection of previously published (updated) papers coauthored by Mark Warshawsky and colleagues regarding retirement savings issues, in a context where an increasing proportion of retirement income will come from defined contribution plans or personal savings rather than defined benefit pensions and where public financing of long-term care (LTC) is very limited. At the same time, relatively few seniors choose to purchase private longevity or LTC insurance. Various chapters explain why and explore what can be done to make such insurance more attractive. Retirees face a variety of risks in choosing their investment and payout strategies, including longevity, volatility, liquidity, inflation, market timing, and survivor risk. Seniors want their savings to last their entire lifetime at as generous a level as possible, while avoiding the high volatility that high-return strategies involve as well as the illiquidity, inflexibility, and inflation dangers that simple annuitization involves. What kind of payout strategy will protect against longevity risk without increasing these other risks? Chapters coauthored with Jeffrey Brown and with Tomeka Hill present a broad introduction to annuities and summarize the potential uses of variable annuities, inflation-indexed annuities, and joint annuities to mitigate inflation, market timing, and survivor risk. Several chapters coauthored with Gaobo Pang simulate the effects of alternative investment/payout strategies, using a large number of 36-year periods based on historical rates of return from 1962 to 2008. While the best strategy depends on individual preferences, the authors conclude that key ingredients are likely to include a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds during the accumulation stage that is converted into a fixed at retirement--- either partially or fully through gradual laddered purchases. In 2012-2013, interest rates on bonds (therefore payouts on new annuities) are very low and stock market volatility is very high relative to historical data. It is not clear whether that will change the optimal payout strategy for individuals who are close to retirement now. One of the major risks that retirees face is the probability that, at some point, they will require long-term custodial/medical care--in their own home, an assisted living facility, or a nursing home--thereby sharply increasing their cost of living. Several chapters (coauthored with Christopher Murtaugh and Brenda Spillman) investigate the potential role for a care annuity that combines an immediate life with an LTC policy that pays an enhanced income flow (a pop-up) if the person develops a disability (the inability to perform two or four activities of daily life). If the probability of such a disability is positively correlated with expected mortality rates, the adverse selection that characterizes each type of insurance separately might be reduced when they are combined. The combined product is supposed to appeal to individuals with low-mortality and low-disability risks who are primarily interested in annuities, as well as individuals with high-mortality and high-disability risks who are primarily interested in LTC insurance. Pooling these two subgroups counteracts adverse selection for each separate risk. It also cuts the needs for expensive underwriting and the exclusion of potential consumers by underwriters. Both these factors allow for a lower price on and, possibly, more purchases of the combined package. The empirical analysis suggests that prices might fall by 3-4 percent. Consequently, Warshawsky and colleagues advocate the development of such a product. These chapters and the ideas behind them are the most interesting part of the book. However, I have several misgivings. First of all, a 3-4 percent price reduction does not seem huge to me. …