ABSTRACT

Family living delivers improved health, an old actuarial truth. A legal analyst identifies group risk assessment as a type of classification "at the heart of the insurance system." Differences in psychological or material circumstances may account for the rest of married couples' distinct advantage in health. Health records for a national sample of young women indicate that "women who were not married generally had worse health trends than married women." Tax policy can have a profound effect on family health. Historically rooted analysis justifies tax preferences for married couples and tax penalties for divorce and non-marital cohabitation. The estate tax is also anti-family. Those who support confiscatory estate taxes on the basis of progressive social theories are ignoring the way such taxes deplete capital accrual by creating disincentives to work and save. The researchers trace the depressed levels of educational and occupational accomplishment found among young adults from intact families to the low levels of violence they experienced during adolescence.