knowledge and surgery are continually adding to the span of human life, those who sell life insurance have long been selling an article which was really rather less valuable than they believed it to be; and so we constantly find the companies reporting that their mortality experience has been considerably below expectation. Which means to say that the bargain made with the assured has been in favour of the companies, though the assured have been able to share in this advantage by means of "with-profit" policies.[1]
Another factor in their favour is that those who insure their lives are likely from this very fact to be good lives, because they are likely to apply to living the same prudence and forethought and intelligence concerning responsibilities that led them to the act of insuring. So that the life risk is "selected." On the other hand, though the Black Death no longer ravages Europe, influenza sometimes has an appreciable effect on the death-rate.
In other forms of insurance, this favourable selection does not help those who provide them. All ships of any value that sail are insured with their cargoes and in some cases the selection is the other way. At least I have heard it suggested that an owner driver who has insured
- ↑ See Chapter II, p. 28.
