Strong and rising empirical evidence across countries finds that longevity is highly heterogeneous in key socioeconomic characteristics, including income. A positive relationship between lifetime income and life expectancy at retirement amounts to a straight tax/subsidy mechanism when the...

This paper demonstrates that the link between heterogeneity in longevity and lifetime income across countries is mostly high and often increasing; that it translates into an implicit tax/subsidy, with rates reaching 20 percent and higher in some countries; that such rates risk perverting...

Heterogeneity in longevity between socioeconomic groups is increasingly documented for developed economies and is reviewed in the paper. Heterogeneity in life expectancy disaggregated by main socioeconomic characteristics – such as age, gender, race, health, education, profession, income, and...

In many policy areas it is essential to use the best estimates of life expectancy, but such estimates are vital to most areas of pension policy – from indexed access age and the calculation of initial benefits to the financial sustainability of pension schemes and the operation of their...