Previous studies of financial health of insurance companies are mainly focused on insurers operating in the United States and developed economies. This article focuses on the solvency of general (property-liability) and life insurance companies in Asia using firm data and macro data separately. It uses different classification methods to classify the financial status of both general and life insurance companies. With the exception of Japan, failures of insurers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan are nonexistent. We find that, first, the factors that significantly affect general insurers' financial health in Asian economies are firm size, investment performance, liquidity ratio, surplus growth, combined ratio, and operating margin. Second, the factors that significantly affect life insurers' financial health are firm size, change in asset mix, investment performance, and change in product mix, but the last three factors are more applicable to Japan. Third, the financial health of insurance companies in Singapore seems to be significantly weakened by the Asian Financial Crisis. As the insurance industry in different Asian economies is at different stages of development, they require different regulatory guidelines. Copyright The Journal of Risk and Insurance.

Previous studies of life insurance demand mainly employ multivariate regression analysis to examine the social, economic and demographic effects on life insurance purchases. However, this causal modeling approach can not separate the age, period, and cohort effects completely. This study employs cohort analysis method as well as age standardization and decomposition to examine the life insurance purchase pattern in the U.S. from 1940 through 1996. It finds that, without the aging process, the purchase rate in 1990 and 1995 would have been even lower. It also finds that the baby boomers tend to purchase lesser life insurance than their earlier counterparts and that this phenomenon consequently led to the decline of recent life insurance purchases in the U.S. Men show a strong age effect and strong negative cohort effects while women have strong positive cohort effects.

This study examines the presence and causes of the underwriting cycle in Asia. It also compares the characteristics of the underwriting cycle in emerging markets in Asia with its characteristics in developed markets. We found that, first, second-order autoregression results support the existence of the underwriting cycle in Asia. Second, the analysis of premium changes provides some support for the rational expectations/institutional intervention hypothesis. Third, although there is little evidence to prove that the stock markets and interest rates have caused the cycle in Asia, the results seem to indicate that the underwriting cycles in Asian countries are mainly related to the pace of the economic growth in those countries. Fourth, our results with respect to the factors affecting the changes in premiums generally differ from those found for the developed nations.

We use vital registration data published since 1979 to update trends in the timing of first births. Two important trends are documented. First, the likelihood that childless women over age 30 will have a first birth has increased since the 1970s. This change shows that women born in the 1950s are "catching up" on fertility postponed at younger ages. Second, racial differences in the timing of first births are very large. For those born in the 1950s, nonwhites have first births much earlier, and far fewer nonwhite than white women will remain permanently childless. In the second part of the paper, we use these data for recent years to assess earlier projections of childlessness based on cohort and period approaches. We also assess the accuracy of stated intentions to have no children.