Work in progress
1.-Benchmarking Spanish Defined Benefit Pensions Using a Notional Defined Contribution Approach: A Cohort-Based Analysis of Disability and Retirement Pensions
This paper applies Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) methodology to benchmark the actuarial fairness of Spain’s contributory Defined Benefit (DB) pension system over the 2015–2023 period. Using detailed administrative microdata from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives (MCVL), the study compares the notional capital that each pensioner would have accumulated under a pure NDC rule with the actual capital cost of retirement and disability pensions. The analysis yields Internal Rates of Return (IRR) and Money’s Worth Ratios (MWR), disaggregated by cohort, gender, length of contribution, and contingency. Results confirm widespread actuarial deficits and reveal systematic redistributive patterns, especially favouring women and short-career workers. Two often-overlooked features—disability pensions and survivor benefit reversibility—emerge as major contributors to these imbalances. Disability pensions generate the largest actuarial gaps and represent a structural imbalance often treated as the “elephant in the room” in pension reform debates. The findings indicate that recent reforms have modestly reduced disparities and that deep actuarial and distributional challenges remain. We advocate for improved actuarial transparency, integrated risk modelling, and clearer separation between contributory and redistributive functions.
2.-Divorce insurance: actuarial reality, legal challenges, and fictional imagination (with Juan Bataller-Grau)
Divorce insurance is frequently proposed but rarely implemented, revealing a persistent gap between actuarial feasibility and social acceptance. This paper clarifies the technical, legal, and cultural conditions that shape that gap and asks how fiction influences the debate. Combining a comparative case review of products in Europe and North America with textual analysis of the 2025 South-Korean series The Divorce Insurance, we integrate actuarial modelling, EU insurance law, and media studies.
Results show that divorce meets classical insurability criteria and could be authorised under Solvency II as legal-expenses or nuptiality cover, yet moral-hazard concerns, regulatory ambiguity, and stigma restrict market entry. Fictional representation humanises these barriers: by casting the actuary as protagonist, the series translates abstract risk into relatable dilemmas and exposes cultural taboos around commodifying marital failure.
The study contributes a novel framework for comparing narrative and real-world perspectives on insurance innovation. The findings indicate that divorce-insurance designs are most likely to succeed when actuarial soundness, legal compliance and narrative legitimacy are aligned, and that collaboration among actuaries, regulators and storytellers could help bring socially sensitive insurance products to market.
3.- El seguro de divorcio como seguro de sumas: una propuesta desde el Derecho español (con Juan Bataller-Grau)
El divorcio es un riesgo que genera necesidades económicas. Una vez concluida la licitud del aseguramiento del seguro de divorcio en nuestro anterior trabajo, ofrecemos ahora las claves para la construcción de una póliza en el ordenamiento jurídico español. El seguro de divorcio es clasificado como seguro de personas y como seguro de sumas. A partir de estas coordenadas se analizan las especialidades que plantea su contratación en sede de elementos personales; así como del riesgo y su declaración; para finalizar con el siniestro y la prestación del asegurador. En definitiva, se trata de proporcionar el andamiaje para la construcción de un contrato atípico, pero de indudable utilidad práctica y con unas excelentes perspectivas de mercado.
Recent WP (not yet published)
35.-Vidal-Meliá, C. (2025). Divorce Insurance: A Concept Ahead of Its Time or Doomed to Fail?. Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE, no. 2, 1-46.
Estado: No publicado. Primera ronda
34.-Vidal-Meliá, C., Pérez-Salamero González, J. M., Garvey, A. M., & Castañer, A. (2024). The supplementary table on pensions (Table 29): Actuarial balance sheet update for the Spanish pension system to 2021, wave three. FEDEA, I Jornadas sobre el Sistema Público de Pensiones y Seguridad Social. Estudios sobre la Economía Española, no. 2024-18.
Estado: No publicado. Primera ronda.
33.-Vidal-Meliá, C., Ventura, M., Regúlez Castillo, M., & Pérez-Salamero González, J. M. (2023). Inequalities in the longevity of females and males aged 65+ in Spain, 2008-2021: The role of pension income. Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE, no. 8, 1-40.
Estado: No publicado. Primera ronda.