Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States (Legacy Editions) - Hardcover

Zelizer, Viviana A. Rotman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231183348 ISBN 13: 9780231183345

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Life insurance-the promise of an insurer to pay a sum upon a person's death in exchange for a regular premium-is a bizarre enterprise. How can we monetize human life? Should we? What statistics do we use, what assumptions do we make, and what behavioral factors do we consider? First published in 1979, Morals and Markets Is a pathbreaking study exploring the development of life insurance in the United States. Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer combines economic history and a sociological perspective to advance a novel interpretation of the life insurance industry. The book pioneered a cultural approach to the analysis of morally controversial markets. Zelizer begins in the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of the life insurance industry, a contentious chapter in the history of American business. Life insurance was stigmatized at first, denounced in newspapers and condemned by religious leaders as an immoral and sacrilegious gamble on human life. Over time, the business became a widely praised arrangement to secure a family's future. How did life insurance overcome cultural barriers? As Zelizer shows, the evolution of the industry in the United States matched evolving attitudes toward death, money, family relations, property, and personal legacy.

About this title

About the Author

Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer is the Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. She is the author ofEconomic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy(2010),The Purchase of Intimacy(2005),The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies(1994), andPricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children(1985). She is also coeditor of the series Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231183348
• ISBN 13: 9780231183345
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264