In this paper we provide an analysis of the life insurance market in Sweden from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. We consider determinants put forward in the financial history literature to explain the growth of life insurance. The paper shows that income elasticity of demand gives a fairly good approximation of the development in the twentieth century, while the development of risk and insurance innovation among other things need to be taken into account to explain the growth of life insurance in the nineteenth century. The price of life insurance, measured as the overhead-to-premium-income ratio, remained fairly constant during the second half of the nineteenth century, while the risk, as indicated in terms of crude mortality rates and its volatility, did decline. This probably improved the return on life insurance savings and further helped the entry of new firms. The average premium size was reduced to enable the diffusion of life insurance to workers.

We employ cost‐of‐living surveys, business archives, and firm data to examine the impact of the compulsory pension on the demand for life insurance in Sweden from 1884 to 1914—a period that covers the implementation of the first public compulsory old‐age pension reform and the take‐off of industry life insurance. As predicted on the basis of the contemporary literature on crowding‐out effects, we find that the compulsory pension reduced the demand for life insurance. Our panel‐data analysis of lapse rates on insurance policies shows a significant crowding‐out effect of pension payments. We conclude that the introduction of the general compulsory pension had a crowding‐out effect on households’ holdings of insurance policies.

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Mutual societies have been recognised for their ability to mitigate information asymmetry. Although successful in reducing sickness claims, the exclusion of women was common. Health insurance societies argued the exclusion was a means to reduce adverse selection and moral hazard since women were regarded as higher risk. In this paper, we explore differences in organisational characteristics between societies that excluded and societies that did not exclude women as members between 1901 to 1910. Based on panel data, the study shows that societies that excluded women were less successful in keeping down sickness claims, in relation to benefits, than gendermixed societies.

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.