A Young Man's Benefit: The Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Sickness Insurance in the United States and Canada, 1860-1929 by George Neil Emery and J.C. Herbert Emery

€51,95
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Using cliometric methods and records from six grand-lodge archives, A Young Man's Benefit rejects the conventional wisdom about friendly societies and sickness insurance, arguing that IOOF lodges were financially sound institutions, were more efficient than commercial insurers, and met a market demand headed by young men who lacked alternatives to market insurance, not older men who had an above-average risk of sickness disability. Emery and Emery show that many young men joined the Odd Fellows for sickness insurance and quit the society once self-insurance - savings - or family insurance - secondary incomes from older children - made it feasible for them. The older men, who valued the social benefits of membership and did not need the sick benefit, gradually became a majority and dismantled the IOOF's insurance provisions.

McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999.
ISBN: 9780773518247. 184 pp.
Inscribed by author George Emery.
Hardcover. Fine in a near fine jacket.
Fading to spine.