Life Insurance Demand Under Health Shock Risk
Life Insurance Demand Under Health Shock Risk
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DOI：
10.1111/jori.12149
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发表时间：
2015-06
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Christoph Hambel;H. Kraft;Lorenz S. Schendel;Mogens Steffensen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Christoph Hambel;H. Kraft;Lorenz S. Schendel;Mogens Steffensen
本文研究了一个家庭生命周期的消费-投资-保险问题。工薪阶层面临着健康休克的风险，这大大增加了他死亡的可能性。家庭可以购买具有现实功能的定期人寿保险。特别是，现有的合同是长期的，因此决定是棘手的，只能以高昂的成本进行修改。此外，只有在被保险人身体健康的情况下，才有可能进行修改。我们的模型的第二个重要和现实的特点是，工薪阶层的劳动收入是不跨越的。我们的文件，未跨越的劳动收入和保险决策的粘性相结合，降低了保险需求显着。这是因为收入冲击导致需要减少保险覆盖面，因为保费变得更难以负担。由于这种减少成本高昂，而且家庭预计到这些潜在成本，因此他们在所有年龄段购买的保护较少。特别是，年轻家庭完全远离人寿保险市场。
This paper studies the life cycle consumption-investment-insurance problem of a family. The wage earner faces the risk of a health shock that significantly increases his probability of dying. The family can buy term life insurance with realistic features. In particular, the available contracts are long term so that decisions are sticky and can only be revised at significant costs. Furthermore, a revision is only possible as long as the insured person is healthy. A second important and realistic feature of our model is that the labor income of the wage earner is unspanned. We document that the combination of unspanned labor income and the stickiness of insurance decisions reduces the insurance demand significantly. This is because an income shock induces the need to reduce the insurance coverage, since premia become less affordable. Since such a reduction is costly and families anticipate these potential costs, they buy less protection at all ages. In particular, young families stay away from life insurance markets altogether.