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Investing in Life

Name: Investing in Life
Brand: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
SKU: 9781421411941
Price: 86.99 AUD
Availability: InStock

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESSISBN: 9781421411941

Insurance in Antebellum America

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$86.99

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By Sharon Ann Murphy
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Release Date: January 14, 2014
Format: PAPERBACK
Pages: 416

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Investing in Life considers the creation and expansion of the American life insurance industry from its early origins in the 1810s through the 1860s and examines how its growth paralleled and influenced the emergence of the middle class.Using the economic instability of the period as her backdrop, Sharon Ann Murphy also analyzes changing roles for women; the attempts to adapt slavery to an urban, industrialized setting; the rise of statistical thinking; and efforts to regulate the business environment. Her research directly challenges the conclusions of previous scholars who have dismissed the importance of the earliest industry innovators while exaggerating clerical opposition to life insurance.Murphy examines insurance as both a business and a social phenomenon. She looks at how insurance companies positioned themselves within the marketplace, calculated risks associated with disease, intemperance, occupational hazard, and war, and battled fraud, murder, and suicide. She also discusses the role of consumerstheir reasons for purchasing life insurance, their perceptions of the industry, and how their desires and demands shaped the ultimate product.

Series Editor's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: New Risks in a Changing World
Part I: The Creation of an Industry
1. Understanding Mortality in Antebellum America: The Search for a Stable Business Model
2. Selecting Risks in an Anonymous World: The Development of the Agency System
3. Lying, Cheating, and Stealing versus The Court of Public Opinion: Preventing Moral Hazard and Insurance Fraud
4. The Public Interest in a Private Industry: Life Insurance and the Regulatory-Promotional State
Part II: Reaching Out to the Middle Class
5. Protecting Women and Children ""in the hour of their distress"": Targeting the Fears of an Emerging Middle Class
6. Targeting the Aspirations of an Emerging Middle Class: The Triumph of Mutual Life Insurance Companies
7. Securing Human Property: Slavery, Industrialization, and Urbanization in the Upper South
8. Acting ""in defiance of Providence""? The Public Perception of Life Insurance
Part III: Cooperation, Competition, and the Quest for Stability
9. Seeking Stability in an Increasingly Competitive Industry: The Creation of the American Life Underwriters' Convention
10. Insuring Soldiers, Insuring Civilians: The Civil War as a Watershed for the Life Insurance Industry
11. The Perils of Success during the Postbellum Years
Conclusion: ""Have you provided for your Family an Insuranceon your Life?""
Appendix
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

""A very thorough examination of the birth and growth of the life insurance industry in America from the early 1800s through the Civil War. The author's research is exceptional... In short, this excellent book provides a look at matters of life and death in the Civil War era that you may not have considered before.""

Investing in Life

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