After the Catastrophic 1918 Flu Pandemic, Annuities Did Fine
April 22, 2020 by Allison Bell
One possible clue about how the U.S. annuity market could look in 20 years is that life insurers created the modern U.S. annuity market in the decade in the decade after the catastrophic 1918 influenza pandemic.
People with an interest in the topic can see how newspapers of the era covered the topic by searching through electronic newspaper archives, such as the Newpapers.com archive.
The consumers and life insurers in the U.S. insurance market in late 1918 had just gotten through World War I, faced the prospect of the country having to pay off mountains of war bonds, in were in the middle of the flu pandemic, which would kill about 600,000 Americans over three years, or 0.6% of the U.S. population, and would be especially hard on pregnant women and working-age men.
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