IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v41y2003i4p531-554.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Life Insurance Holdings Related to Financial Vulnerabilities?

Author

Listed:
  • B. Douglas Bernheim
  • Katherine Grace Carman
  • Jagadeesh Gokhale
  • Laurence J. Kotlikoff

Abstract

Using the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances and an elaborate life-cycle model, we quantify the potential financial impact of each individual's death on his or her survivors and measure the degree to which life insurance moderates these consequences. Life insurance is essentially uncorrelated with financial vulnerability at every stage of the life cycle. As a result, the impact of insurance among at-risk households is modest, and substantial uninsured vulnerabilities are widespread, particularly among younger couples. We also identify a systematic gender bias: For any given level of financial vulnerability, couples provide significantly more protection for wives than for husbands. (JEL D10, G22) Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • B. Douglas Bernheim & Katherine Grace Carman & Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 2003. "Are Life Insurance Holdings Related to Financial Vulnerabilities?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(4), pages 531-554, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:41:y:2003:i:4:p:531-554
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ei/cbg026
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yue Li, 2018. "Economic Analysis Of Social Security Survivors Insurance," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(4), pages 2043-2073, November.
    2. Thomas Url, 2014. "Vorteile der Risikoübernahme in der klassischen Lebensversicherung," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 60603, April.
    3. Hwang, In Do, 2024. "Behavioral aspects of household portfolio choice: Effects of loss aversion on life insurance uptake and savings," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 1029-1053.
    4. Itzik Fadlon & Shanthi P. Ramnath & Patricia K. Tong, 2019. "Market Inefficiency and Household Labor Supply: Evidence from Social Security’s Survivors Benefits," NBER Working Papers 25586, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Louis Kaplow, 2005. "The Value of a Statistical Life and the Coefficient of Relative Risk Aversion," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 23-34, July.
    6. David M. Cutler & Amy Finkelstein & Kathleen McGarry, 2008. "Preference Heterogeneity and Insurance Markets: Explaining a Puzzle of Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 157-162, May.
    7. Katherine Grace Carman & Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 2003. "The Impact on Consumption and Saving of Current and Future Fiscal Policies," NBER Working Papers 10085, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:41:y:2003:i:4:p:531-554. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.