The life insurance industry in developing Asian economies is underdeveloped compared with global standards. The low market penetration is attributed to full or partial government ownership and entry restrictions on foreign insurers. Regulatory changes and adoption of liberal policies have aided the growth of the life insurance industry in the past decade. At the same time, economic and social factors were expected to promote insurance awareness and consumption. In this context, the paper analyses the factors explaining life insurance demand in 12 Asian economies, including economies from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and Association of Southeast Asian Nations regions, as well as China. The results suggest that income, financial depth, inflation, the real interest rate, and the youth dependency ratio are significant determinants of life insurance consumption. Foreign ownership and improved regulations may foster growth. But urbanisation and the literacy rate are among the few determinants found not to have the impact observed in previous studies. The research highlights the limitations of studies using macrodata and contributes to understanding of the growing insurance industry in the region.

Compensating wage differentials, Hedonic price, Valuations of life/injury, J17, J28, J31,

Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) is engaged in interdisciplinary research in analytical and applied areas of the social sciences, encompassing diverse aspects of development. ISEC works with central, state and local governments as well as international agencies by undertaking systematic studies of resource potential, identifying factors influencing growth and examining measures for reducing poverty. The thrust areas of research include state and local economic policies, issues relating to sociological and demographic transition, environmental issues and fiscal, administrative and political decentralization and governance. It pursues fruitful contacts with other institutions and scholars devoted to social science research through collaborative research programmes, seminars, etc.

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Graded caste inequality is the most stubborn feature of the ancient caste system which continues with some of its worst features even today. In view of this context, this paper looks at the persistence of graded caste inequality and the role of economic discrimination, drawing mainly from the recent empirical and theoretical research. It examines the following three interrelated aspects of the graded caste inequality (a) Nature of (graded) inequality in income and poverty, and other indicators of human development like malnutrition and education, particularly among three castes: former untouchables (SCs), OBC and higher castes (HCs); (b) Empirical evidence from recent studies on market and non-market discrimination faced by the SC; and (c) Impact of discrimination on income and poverty of SCs, OBCs and HCs in a graded manner. We find that much of the inequality in per capita consumption expenditure is due to inequality in asset ownership (agricultural land and enterprise) and higher education. Most of the explained difference is due to higher education/regular salaried jobs and asset ownership in the form of land and enterprises. In the urban salaried labour market, the contribution of discrimination to wage differential between SCs and HCs is 28.5 per cent in the regular labour market, 19.4 and 31.7 per cent for public and private sectors, respectively. We also find that in the regular labour market, the extent of caste-based wage gap as well as discrimination varies significantly across the quintiles of the wage distribution. The wage gap between SCs and HCs that is attributable to discrimination is higher in top quintiles than at bottom quintiles of wage distribution. We also find that discrimination against SCs and OBCs partially operates through occupational segregation.