Individual Insurance and Mutual Support Arrangements in Developing Countries

Friederike Lenel

No 51, DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Insurance coverage in the developing world is expanding rapidly. As recently as 2005, only a small number of commercial insurers offered insurance products that specifically targeted low-income people (‘microinsurance’). Seven years later, in 2012, more than half of the world’s 50 largest insurance companies were involved in microinsurance. International donor organizations, which identified the promotion of social protection systems as a key priority, strongly encourage this development. Yet, while the positive role insurance can play for poverty reduction is fairly uncontroversial, the potential negative side-effects of the rapid insurance expansion are less apparent. One concern is that the establishment of formal insurance schemes can lead to a paradigm shift: market-based schemes crowd-out social cohesion; adversely affecting the mutual support arrangements that form an important pillar of the risk management strategies of the poor. Evidence isnot clear-cut.

Pages: 7 p.
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_ ... IW_Roundup_51_en.pdf (application/pdf)

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:diw:diwrup:51en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().