In the modern Western world, we tend to be insured by the state or for-profit insurers. We have privileged this system over mutual or micro-insurance, whose long and rich history we tend to forget. Yet, mutual and micro-insurance is becoming increasingly important, both in the Western and in the non-Western world and bears re-examination.

This book traces the track record of mutual insurance from 1550 to the present, examining provisions for burial, sickness, unemployment, old age, and widowhood. The author seeks to address such topics as the type of risks micro-insurance covered between 1550 and 2015; how it was organized throughout its history; who provided the coverage; and how contributions, benefit levels, and conditions have changed.

Importantly, the author explores why this system has worked through, and endured, the test of time. Mutual insurance can, for instance, overcome classic insurance problems such as adverse selection and moral hazards. The author demonstrates that the study of the position micro-insurance historically assumed in mixed economies of welfare presents interesting lessons for today's insurance market, as well as for today's mutualism.

Autorentext
Marco H.D. van Leeuwen is a professor of social science history at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He specializes in the study of global social inequality from 1500 to the present. Professor van Leeuwen is an honorary research fellow at the International Institute of Social History. He has written widely on social inequality and mobility as well as on philanthropy, charity, mutual aid, private and social insurance, and the history of risks. His work has been published in such journals as the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, *the *Journal of Interdisciplinary History, The Economic History Review, the Journal of Social History, Continuity and Change, and the European Sociological Review.

Inhalt

Chapter 1) Mutual Insurance.-

Chapter 2) The Era of the Guilds: Mutual Insurance 1550-1800.- Chapter 3) The Age of the Friendly Societies:Mutual Insurance in the Nineteenth Century.- Chapter 4) The Rise and Decline of Modern Trade Union Insurance, 1900-65.-

Chapter 5) New Initiatives, 1965-2015.-

Chapter 6) Principles and Practices of Mutual Insurance, 1550-2015.