Racial Disparities in Life Insurance Coverage

Timothy Harris and Aaron Yelowitz

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

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.

Keywords: Life Insurance; Racial disparities; Employer Sponsored Life Insurance; Whole Life Insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 G22 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-04-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:64005

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