Discrimination and Insurance

Abstract

Is it fair and just to charge men and women identical life insurance premiums despite their different actuarial risk? What about charging the old and the young different premiums? As entities whose core business is to classify people based on their actuarial risk, should private insurance companies not be allowed to discriminate between various groups? To answer these and various other questions, I start this chapter by revealing the complete confusion that exists in the legal terrain with respect to antidiscrimination norms in insurance. I then show how philosophers writing about discrimination mostly have been writing at a level of abstraction so high that it comfortably ignores relevant nuances, thus making the entire literature largely useless for any insurance-related policy-making purposes. I conclude by proposing a theoretical framework that can help policy makers apply a fair and just anti-discrimination policy.