Abstract:

Insurance is a main measure for residents to deal with risks. With the arrival of the aging tide and the post-pandemic era， residents pay more and more attention to the aftermath of health shocks， leading to the increase of insurance demand and new requirements in terms of the purchase strategy of personal insurance. Therefore， it is worthwhile to investigate into the insurance decisions of residents against health risk， for the purpose of improving residents' quality of life and meeting people's aspiration for a better life. A life-cycle model is established to study the optimal purchase strategy of personal insurance under health shocks. Three kinds of insurance contracts are assumed to be available in the model： life insurance， pension insurance and critical illness insurance. A health risk model is constructed to profile the transition probabilities and paths of residents' health status. A stochastic income model is constructed to reflect the long-term trend of wage income， as well as the impact of health shocks and other random factors on wage income. Based on the principle of maximizing expected lifetime utility， residents' optimal consumption-saving decisions and personal purchase strategy solutions under health shocks can be achieved. Numerical methods are applied to solve the optimal consumption-saving decision and personal insurance purchase strategy of residents under health risks. The parameters are set mainly by referring to the common assumptions in existing literature， and based on statistical data which are obtained from China Family Panel Studies （CFPS）， National Health Commission of China， Ministry of Civil Affairs of China， etc. Comparing the optimal consumption-saving decisions of residents with and without insurance， the results show that insurance will significantly reduce the saving level of residents and increase the consumption level after retirement. In addition， the optimal purchase strategy of personal insurance show that residents' insurance expenditure in the working period is U-shaped， i.e. residents tend to purchase health insurance in the early working period to prevent bankruptcy caused by health shock， and purchase annuity insurance and life insurance in the late working period to guarantee the living expenses after retirement and satisfy the motive of leaving a legacy respectively. Based on our findings， suggestions on residents’ personal insurance purchase strategy are provided. First， young residents should purchase health insurance to manage health risks and avoid bankruptcy. Second， provided that the savings rate is significantly lower than the annuity pricing rate， residents should annuitize most of their assets and purchase life insurance to meet their bequest motive.

Key words: health shocks, personal insurance purchase strategy, life cycle