Lifecycle Consumption and Life Insurance

a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The aim of this research is to analyze, in a systematic manner, the literature on the consumer behavior and the impact of life insurance in the lifecycle scenario, to which for the consumer, the possibility to be able to use particular financial products has been added. This work uses a framework based on four stages and to process the systematic literature review (SLR) we employ the Tranfield approach in order to provide an efficient and high-quality method for identifying and evaluating extensive studies. The methodology was pursued step by step, analyzing keywords, topics and journal quality to arrive at a set of relevant papers that was analyzed in detail to evaluate the methods employed and results obtained. Through our research method, we selected 33 relevant articles, from which it emerged that consumer behavior depends on risk attitude, ageing and, hence, longevity and brevity risk. The results suggest that various types of life insurance and particular types of financial products (e.g. annuities, tontines and tounity) are used, all with the aim of eliminating these risks. On the other hand, the use of the various types of financial products might be a good choice to ensure flatter individual consumption, because it eliminates longevity and brevity risk. The importance of the study is to provide readers with a framework for the context analyzed. Based on the findings, this study concludes with some implications that aim to explain consumer behavior.