Caley Horan's account of the insurance industry in the United States highlights the political and social ascendancy of questions of risk and security in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The book argues that the insurance industry effectively limited the role of the Federal Government by anticipating the domains of social welfare where citizens might have sought government intervention and support-accident insurance, welfare payments and housing being among the more prominent. The industry did this by persuading Americans, especially those in power, that risk was best managed by private industry using actuarial science rather than universal social entitlements. The industry's objective was to ensure that they would play a central role in, and of course benefit from, the society-wide project of managing financial risk. The success of this private industry model for managing risk, Horan suggests, has had baleful consequences, notably for those populations deemed "too risky" for insurance cover.
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