Event

Launch meeting of the study on digital transformation of social insurance administration and services

Briefing note

Research brief 2: Institutional constraints for the extension of social insurance coverage to informal economy workers in China

20 November 2020

Publication

Impact Insurance Research Paper #34: Borrowing from the insurer

01 July 2013

Research Paper #34 presents results from a randomized control trial in rural China designed to understand whether a change in the timing of the payment of a premium for swine insurance helps overcoming barriers to insurance demand and whether insurance allows farmers to increase investment in activities that expose them to more risk. Findings show that insurance take-up is three times higher among those who were given the option to pay at the end of the insured period; that insurance has a positive impact on investment; and that encouraging insurance purchases can have a positive long run effect on the income and welfare or rural households.

Publication

Impact Insurance Research Paper #28: Smallholder participation in hog insurance and willingness to pay for improved policies

01 January 2013

Using rural household survey data collected from Sichuan province in China, Research Paper #28 examines contributing factors to farmers' participation and their willingness to pay for improvements to the current insurance policy. The analysis shows that farmer demographic characteristics, the size of their operation, as well as their knowledge about insurance play an important role in farmers' insurance participation decisions. These results provide further insights for improving hog insurance policy design and promoting farmers' participation.

Publication

Impact Insurance Research Paper #8: Social networks and insurance take-up

01 October 2011

Research Paper #8 estimates the role of information in insurance take-up using data from a randomized experiment in rural China where information was either offered directly through financial education or accessed indirectly through social networks. Unlike previous studies, the experimental design allows to not only identify the causal effect of social networks, but also to differentiate the various channels through which they operate, including improvement of negotiating power, imitation, and social learning of insurance benefits. The results show that social networks have a large and significant effect on insurance take-up decisions mainly driven by the social learning of insurance benefits. The policy implication is that offering financial education to a subset of households in a village community selected for their strong friendship links with others, their recognized farming skills, and leadership roles, and relying on social networks to extend its effect on more farmers through social learning, is an effective way of improving insurance take-up.