Market Insurance, Self-Protection and the Family : A Beckerian Analysis

We study parents' demand for insurance and protection in a Beckerian context. Parents derive utility from the household's material living standard and number of children and there is a trade-off between the two. Several important new results emerge. These include ; first, a duality between how an increase in an exogenous child mortality risk affects the demand for children and how an exogenous increase in the number of children affects the demand for physical safety for a given child ; second, a distinction between the different implications of endogenous safety as a private good and as a local public good for the household ; third, the important interactions between the parents' demand for insurance and personal and household safety and the presence and nature3 of their bequest functions.