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Sex Discrimination in Insurance
Author(s) -
BEIDER PERRY C.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of applied philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.339
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5930
pISSN - 0264-3758
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5930.1987.tb00204.x
Subject(s) - appeal , argument (complex analysis) , status quo , distributive justice , status quo bias , law and economics , economic justice , position (finance) , economics , sociology , law , actuarial science , positive economics , political science , microeconomics , biochemistry , chemistry , finance
The public controversy over sex‐based differentials in insurance pricing makes heavy use of terms like ‘fairness’ and ‘discrimination’; in particular, both sides argue that their position is the one dictated by considerations of fairness. Appeal to a basic principle of distributive justice shows that these differentials are not fair. Nevertheless, there is a substantial ethical argument to be made for the industry's status quo , based on the liberty of the low‐risk insurees. The paper considers an alternative reform proposal, with a qualitatively different freedom cost; seven factors are then identified as useful in evaluating the trade‐off between the freedom and justice at stake in any questionable insurance classification variable. A brief concluding section attempts to generalise this analysis to provide a broad framework for the analysis of other discrimination issues.