External publications

Micro-insurance

Loewe, Markus
External Publications (2021)

in: Esther Schüring / Markus Loewe (Hrsg.), Handbook on Social Protection Systems, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 123–133

ISBN: 978-1-83910-911-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839109119.00023
Open access

Almost  two  decades  ago,  the  notion  of  micro-insurance  raised  a  new  wave  of  attention among  practitioners  and  researchers  in  many  world  regions  but  the  concept  is  much  older. In fact, a large part of today’s insurance companies in Europe and North America started as mutual  insurance  unions  in  the  nineteenth  century  with  low  contribution  rates,  i.e.  informal micro-insurance  arrangements.  Since  about  the  year  2000,  the  concept  was  sparked  in  the international  development  debate  by  the  fact  that  an  increasing  number  of  academics  and practitioners  had  understood  that  more  conventional  social  protection  strategies  (social insurance and assistance) had obviously failed at covering larger shares of people in low- and middle-income countries. A majority of the world population remained vulnerable to manifold risks such as bad health, work disability and unemployment. Of course, the failure was at least partly due to the fact that many governments had tried only half-heartedly to extend the outreach of their social insurance and assistance schemes but there was little reason to hope that governments would change in the short term. New avenues had to be sought in order to extend the overall coverage of social protection systems at a faster pace.the overall coverage of social protection systems at a faster pace.