Longevity risk analysis: applications to the Italian regional data

Abstract

Longevity risk is the risk that members of a given population will live longer than expected. When it occurs, pension providers may have to pay pensions for longer than expected, significantly increasing their costs. While this risk is being adequately studied using the national mortality data provided by the Human Mortality Database, relatively few studies exist that analyse sub-national data. This manuscript proposes a comparative study of some stochastic mortality models to measure the longevity risk on Italian mortality data at the regional level. In particular, the use of the Lee-Carter and Li-Lee models is explored. The models are compared in fitting quality, forecasting accuracy and complexity. Numerical experiments and applications to immediate life annuity evaluation are presented.