Individual Risk Aversion, Inheritance Expectation and Household Annuity Ownership

Written By: Michael Guillemette, and Yi Liu

Although risk preferences and inheritance expectations should affect annuitization decisions, few studies have empirically tested these relations. This study bridges the gap in the prior literature by investigating potential effects that consumer risk aversion and inheritance expectations have on annuitization. Using data from the 2012 wave of the Health and Retirement Study, this study finds that consumers who are more risk averse have a higher likelihood of owning household annuity income compared to consumers who are less risk averse. Consumers with a higher inheritance expectation are more likely to have household annuity income compared to those with a lower inheritance expectation. Finally, when risk aversion is interacted with inheritance expectation, it increases the likelihood of household annuity ownership.