As climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather in developing countries, a key question is whether agricultural insurance can play a larger role in mitigating the household level losses associated with catastrophic droughts.
Insurance products are particularly relevant in regions where agriculture or pastoralism constitute the primary source of income. In these regions indemnity payouts from insurance products can provide significant consumption smoothing benefits to insurance policyholders in the event of drought and improve material well-being.
A paper published last week by the World Bank's Development Research Group ("Insuring Well-being? Buyer's Remorse and Peace of Mind Effects from Insurance") finds that index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) also improves non-material well being for a sample of pastoralists in southern Ethiopia. Specifically, Tafere et al. (2017) find that a "peace of mind" effect associated with purchasing insurance that is positive and statistically significant. They find this effect outweighs a negative "buyer's remorse" effect on well-being, which arises when households purchase insurance and realize after the uncertainty period ends that they did not need the insurance after all.
They note:
"The implication is that, despite premiums set above actuarially fair rates, IBLI improves buyers' SWB [subjective well-being] even over a period when pastoralists in southern Ethiopia lose money on the policy. The ex ante peace of mind effect dominates any ex post buyer's remorse. In other words, even an insurance policy that does not pay out still improves people's perceptions of their well-being."
Estimation strategy
To estimate the "peace of mind" effect, the authors randomize the provision of 10-80 percent discount coupons and comic book or audio tape information interventions to households in the communities in southern Ethiopia. These incentives act as instruments which increase uptake of IBLI among households in an instrumental variables model. In the reduced form stage, the measure of well-being is regressed on the probability of IBLI uptake predicted in the first stage.
The authors measure SWB using the question: "On which step do you place your present economic conditions?" with possible responses ranging in the Likert scale from very bad (1) to very good (5). They employ a vignette-based adjustment of the SWB scores by asking respondents to rank their own circumstances with respect to a set of individuals described in short vignettes to improve the comparability of the subjective welfare measurements to one another.
In both of the years in which insurance policies were active there were no indemnity payouts. This allowed the authors to disentangle the ex ante peace of mind effect from the ex post buyer's remorse effect on SWB. It also ensured that the effects measured were not material or payout based.
There are two issues to consider with respect to the empirical strategy:
Insurance products are particularly relevant in regions where agriculture or pastoralism constitute the primary source of income. In these regions indemnity payouts from insurance products can provide significant consumption smoothing benefits to insurance policyholders in the event of drought and improve material well-being.
A paper published last week by the World Bank's Development Research Group ("Insuring Well-being? Buyer's Remorse and Peace of Mind Effects from Insurance") finds that index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) also improves non-material well being for a sample of pastoralists in southern Ethiopia. Specifically, Tafere et al. (2017) find that a "peace of mind" effect associated with purchasing insurance that is positive and statistically significant. They find this effect outweighs a negative "buyer's remorse" effect on well-being, which arises when households purchase insurance and realize after the uncertainty period ends that they did not need the insurance after all.
They note:
"The implication is that, despite premiums set above actuarially fair rates, IBLI improves buyers' SWB [subjective well-being] even over a period when pastoralists in southern Ethiopia lose money on the policy. The ex ante peace of mind effect dominates any ex post buyer's remorse. In other words, even an insurance policy that does not pay out still improves people's perceptions of their well-being."
Estimation strategy
To estimate the "peace of mind" effect, the authors randomize the provision of 10-80 percent discount coupons and comic book or audio tape information interventions to households in the communities in southern Ethiopia. These incentives act as instruments which increase uptake of IBLI among households in an instrumental variables model. In the reduced form stage, the measure of well-being is regressed on the probability of IBLI uptake predicted in the first stage.
The authors measure SWB using the question: "On which step do you place your present economic conditions?" with possible responses ranging in the Likert scale from very bad (1) to very good (5). They employ a vignette-based adjustment of the SWB scores by asking respondents to rank their own circumstances with respect to a set of individuals described in short vignettes to improve the comparability of the subjective welfare measurements to one another.
In both of the years in which insurance policies were active there were no indemnity payouts. This allowed the authors to disentangle the ex ante peace of mind effect from the ex post buyer's remorse effect on SWB. It also ensured that the effects measured were not material or payout based.
There are two issues to consider with respect to the empirical strategy:
- Depending on how well-being is assessed it is possible that well-being could be positively affected by discounts for the sole reason that it is a discount and is saving people money. If true this would invalidate the instrumental variables assumption that the instrument be exogenous from the reduced form model. Though I considered this possibility, I dismissed it since SWB is assessed in the period after the period in which the discount is applied and insurance purchased, it seems unlikely that said discount would have such a lasting impact on SWB.
