The insurance market work emphasizes health, life, and livestock for idiosyncratic risk and earthquake, drought, freeze, flood, and windstorm for systemic risk. There is now clear evidence that these risks contribute significantly to families moving into poverty, even in industrial countries, and even when there is economic growth. If other factors are considered, the importance of insurance as a social safety net becomes very evident:
- out of 2 billion poor only 10 million have access to insurance
- forty of the 50 fastest growing cities are located in earthquake zones
- the great majority of health expenditures in poor countries are met out of pocket.
Annuity markets have not developed in most countries and with a generation of defined contribution plan members approaching retirement age, mechanisms to produce secure retirement incomes from lump sums need to be developed. The World Bank has been a leader in pension reform over the past decade.
Featured Publications
Earthquake Insurance in Turkey
Chile: An Empirical Analysis of the Annuity Rate
Czech Republic: Pilot Assessment of Governance of the Insurance Sector
