Wealth and the demand for life insurance: evidence from Ontario, 1892

Our analysis of the life insurance holdings of male probated decedents in Ontario in 1892 demonstrates a negative correlation between the level of personal wealth and the demand for life insurance. Consistent with the theoretical literature on the demand for life insurance, and counter to the findings in much of the empirical literature, self-insurance was a substitute for market purchases of life insurance where self-insurance capabilities are a by-product of wealth accumulation. Our evidence suggests that households primarily demanded life insurance when they lacked accumulated reserves, or wealth, for self-insurance, often early in the life cycle. The growth of the life insurance industry reflected the growth of urban population relative to farming and an increased dependence on the head of household’s earnings.     

Sickness absence in compulsory and voluntary health insurance: the case of Sweden at the turn of the twentieth century

At the turn of the twentieth century, Swedish health insurance was organised according to the Western European models of both voluntary, ‘fraternal’ principles and compulsory, ‘factory scheme’ principles. In this paper, we trace the characteristics of both organisational forms, and compare the sickness absence by considering the role of risk selection and mitigation across a large panel of voluntary and compulsory health insurance societies operating in Sweden between 1900 and 1910. We find that voluntary societies used a wide set of rules and practices in order to select and monitor members in order to keep down the number of sick cases. Compulsory societies applied shorter waiting periods and offered more medical treatment, leading to more frequent but shorter sickness absences.     

Extending home ownership before the First World War: the case of the Co‐operative Permanent Building Society, 1884–19131

Formed in the mid‐nineteenth century, the building societies grew rapidly from their humble beginnings as localized ‘self‐help’ institutions to become the dominant players in the house mortgage market by the interwar period. Throughout their early history, the societies presented themselves as champions of home ownership among the working classes, but historians of housing have generally disputed the role that building societies played, or could have played, in extending home ownership before the First World War. The case study presented in this article shows that it was possible for a building society to lend to working‐class borrowers, and that home ownership before the First World War was not beyond the grasp of such people. While it was undoubtedly an exception within the movement, the Co‐operative Permanent Building Society showed a genuine commitment to working‐class owner‐occupation, providing the majority of its loans to both skilled and unskilled workers on easy repayment terms. How it was able to overcome the adverse selection and moral hazard risks involved in lending to such groups of people is the focus of this article.     

Trademarks and British dominance in consumer goods, 1876–1914

Late Victorian Britain was very important in the development of British dominance in light consumer goods industries, such as fermented liquors and spirits; detergents and perfumery; bicycles and other carriages; paper, stationery, and bookbinding; and games of all kinds and sports goods. Firms developed technology‐based innovations and marketing‐based innovations, creating abnormal peaks of trademark registrations in certain industries. This article investigates those peaks and shows that factors usually pointed out as explaining British economic decline in heavy industries did not impact on the development of light consumer goods industries, and on the contrary encouraged their fast growth during this period. Trademark registrations are shown to provide new insights into the debate on British relative decline, when combined with other industry and firm‐level data.     

Marriage seasonality and the industrious revolution: southern Sweden, 1690–18951

In this article we study the evolution of marriage seasonality in relation to economic change, particularly connected to changes in labour supply and work intensity of the kind implied by the ‘industrious revolution’. The focus is on southern Sweden in 1685–1894, which was a period of agricultural transformation and early industrialization, when we would expect to see an increase in work intensity. The analysis is based on about 120,000 marriages from 117 different parishes. The analysis shows that the seasonality of marriage changed dramatically over time, from a classic grain production pattern, with a marriage peak in late spring and a marriage trough at harvest time, to a much more even seasonality, although with the appearance of a very strong peak in December. This change affected rural rather than urban areas, and was present regardless of differences in institutional settings, and for almost all occupational groups below the elite. The changed seasonality pattern is consistent with increasing work intensity over the year, leaving only the weeks around Christmas as a low season. In addition to the increase in work intensity, the privatization of marriage and the availability of time and resources were also important factors in the changing seasonality pattern.