Can We Create Equality Insurance?

By Karen Petrou

Much of the work posted so far on this blog centers on the traditional pillars of financial policy:  monetary policy and the sweeping post-crisis framework of bank regulation.  But, awesome though the Fed’s reach may be and as critical as banking is to income and wealth equality, these financial-policy channels are not the only ones that determine economic equality.  In this blog post, we assess another policy channel:  health, property-and-casualty, and life insurance.  With almost no research in this sector, we pose questions based on what we’ve read and what we think we know based on all our other works.  At the least, insurance requires equality evaluation and, quite likely, significant changes so it makes low-and-moderate income and wealth families healthier, readier to retire, better positioned to bequeath wealth to their children, and all around more equal. Continue reading “Can We Create Equality Insurance?”