Racial Disparities in Life Insurance Coverage

Harris, Timothy and Yelowitz, Aaron (2015): Racial Disparities in Life Insurance Coverage.

Abstract

We evaluate the extent to which there are racial disparities in life insurance coverage using multiple years of the Survey of Income and Program Participation between 2001 and 2010. We find that African-Americans hold significantly more life insurance after controlling for other factors, especially employer-sponsored and whole life insurance. We demonstrate that our findings diverge from prior work because we examine all households instead of focusing exclusively on married and cohabitating households. The findings on life insurance coverage and composition imply that earnings shocks due to mortality are not a contributing factor to racial disparities in wealth.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Life Insurance, Racial disparities, Employer Sponsored Life Insurance, Whole Life Insurance
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D3 - Distribution > D31 - Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions; G - Financial Economics > G2 - Financial Institutions and Services > G22 - Insurance ; Insurance Companies ; Actuarial Studies; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J15 - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants ; Non-labor Discrimination

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