Insurance versus Savings for the Poor: Why One Should Offer Either Both or None This paper analyzes data from a novel field experiment designed to test the impact of two different insurance products and a secret saving device on solidarity in risk-sharing groups among rural villagers in the Philippines. Risk is simulated by a lottery. Risk-sharing is possible in solidarity groups of three and i...

BACKGROUND Asymmetric information is one of the most important issues in insurance market which occurred due to inherent characteristics of one of the agents involved in insurance contracts; hence its management requires designing appropriate policies. This phenomenon can lead to the failure of insurance market via its two consequences, namely, adverse selection and moral hazard. OBJECTIVE Th...

INTRODUCTION A comprehensive literature review revealed a gap in health research regarding the determinants of good health for rural men in Jamaica. This study seeks to fill this void by examining cross-sectional survey data to model the social determinants of the self-reported good health status of rural men in Jamaica. METHOD A sample of 5041 males (> or = 15 years) was extracted from a nat...

This thesis studies two strategies that households may use to keep their consumption smooth in the face of fluctuations in income and expenses: credit (borrowing and savings) and insurance (statecontingent transfers between households). The first chapter asks why insurance among households in rural Thai villages is incomplete. The second chapter analyzes the impacts of micro-credit. The third c...

Although there have been major improvements in oral health, with remarkable advances in the prevention and management of oral diseases, globally, inequalities persist between urban and rural communities. These inequalities exist in the distribution of oral health services, accessibility, utilization, treatment outcomes, oral health knowledge and practices, health insurance coverage, oral health...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate an insurance awareness campaign carried out before the launch of three community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes in rural India, answering the questions: Has the awareness campaign been successful in enhancing participants' understanding of health insurance? What awareness tools were most useful from the participants' point of view? Has enhanced awareness resulted in...

This article assesses insurance uptake in three community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes located in rural parts of two of India's poorest states and offered through women's self-help groups (SHGs). We examine what drives uptake, the degree of inclusive practices of the schemes and the influence of health status on enrolment. The most important finding is that a household's socio-economic...

INTRODUCTION In 2009, China officially launched the New Health Care Reform (NHCR). One important purpose of the reform was to reduce financial burden of health care through health insurance expansion and health care provider regulations. This study aimed to provide evidence on the effect of the NHCR reform on catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) by comparing the occurrence and inequality of CH...

Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product. Demand is significantly price sensitive, but widespread take-up would not be achieved even if the product offered a payout ...