Life insurance and economic empowerment : a theoretical and empirical overview

Abstract EN

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and strength of the relationship between purchasing life insurance plans and economic empowerment by using survey data.

We propose, in the present study, a theoretical framework that could help to explain the promotion of poor people empowerment by life insurance industry.

A random sample of 64 respondents was drawn from life and health policyholders.

The Statistical Package for the Social Science version 20 was used to analyse the data.

The findings show a moderate positive correlation between life insurance and economic empowerment (rs =.

594).

The paper further suggests that (a) annuities can play the most important role in contributing to economic empowerment, (b) improving the ability of policyholders to choose and decide may be the main effect of purchasing life insurance, and (c) the correlation between life insurance and economic empowerment is relatively higher for men.