Life and health insurance consumption in China: demographic and environmental risks

This research investigates life and health (LH) insurance consumption by exploiting the significant regional differences in socio-economic, demographic, and environmental factors in China. This paper further decomposes LH insurance consumption into three types: protection, investment, and health products. We find that changes in demographic conditions associated with the one-child policy, the urbanisation process, an ageing population and imbalanced dependency ratio are significantly related to the consumption of LH insurance, and environmental degradation risk is significantly related to the consumption of health insurance. The empirical results also suggest that insurers' characteristics and pricing strategies are additional important determinants of LH insurance consumption.