Spouses’ dependence across generations and pricing impact on reversionary annuities

This paper studies the dependence between coupled lives - both within and across generations - and its effects on prices of reversionary annuities in the presence of longevity risk. Longevity risk is represented via a stochastic mortality intensity. Dependence is modelled through copula functions. We consider Archimedean single and multi-parameter copulas. We fi nd that dependence decreases when passing from older generations to younger generations. Not only the level of dependence but also its features - as measured by the copula - change across generations: the best-fi t Archimedean copula is not the same across generations. Moreover, for all the generations under exam the single-parameter copula is dominated by the two-parameter one. The independence assumption produces quantifi able mispricing of reversionary annuities. The misspeci cation of the copula produces different mispricing effects on different generations. The research is conducted using a well-known dataset of double life contracts.