The Impact of a Public Health Emergency on the Demand for Life Insurance – An Empirical Analysis Based on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Ying Sun, Xiaoyan Li and Yuantao Xie

China & World Economy, 2023, vol. 31, issue 3, 230-266

Abstract: We examined changes in personal life insurance purchase decisions after a public health event by incorporating perceived health risk and regret into the expected utility function. The model predicts that the epidemic will create incremental insurance demand. Based on the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in China, we used a panel dataset of 30 provinces from 2000 to 2007 and applied the difference‐in‐differences method to confirm the prediction empirically. The results showed that the epidemic did not significantly impact the demand for life insurance in the short term but played a role in the long term. People increased their health‐care expenditure and premiums for new policies after the severe acute respiratory syndrome event, suggesting that the epidemic changed people's perceived risk and triggered anticipated regret, which increased life insurance demand. Some robustness checks also supported our findings.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12469

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:chinae:v:31:y:2023:i:3:p:230-266

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1671-2234

Access Statistics for this article

China & World Economy is currently edited by Yongding Yu

More articles in China & World Economy from Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().