Life Insurance, Human Capital Accumulation and Economic Growth

We compare growth rates in the absence and presence of life insurance using an overlapping generations framework with human capital accumulation to clarify how life insurance contributes to economic growth through the education investment of individuals depending on economic circumstances. Our results show that, as expected, the growth rate is higher when there is life insurance if the rate of time preference or the productivity of human capital accumulation is sufficiently low and if the income loss induced from lifetime uncertainty is moderate. However, if the income loss is sufficiently large, the growth rate is lower when there is life insurance.