Document Type
Thesis
First Faculty Advisor
Rick Gorvett
Second Faculty Advisor
Robert Patalano
Keywords
extreme weather events; climate change; life insurance; United States
Publisher
Bryant University
Rights Management
CC - BY - NC - ND; CC - BY; CC - BY - SA; CC - BY - ND; CC - BY - NC - SA; CC - BY - NC
Abstract
This study aims to discover the effect of extreme weather events on the life insurance industry. As climate change progresses and global temperatures increase, extreme weather events, which are separated into drought, freeze, severe storms, tropical cyclones, wildfires, and winter storms are expected to occur more often. Extreme weather events not only impact the local economies but increase local death rates as well. Using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA NCEI), this study uses regression analysis to examine the correlation between extreme weather and mortality data. Time series regression analysis suggests that there is no significant linear relationship between combined deaths from all seven disasters and time. This is due to the increasing volatility in the annual number of deaths, measured by sample standard deviation and frequency of years with greater than 700 deaths. When the data is reconfigured over six and eleven-year intervals, an exponential relationship forms between annual combined deaths and time. These results contextualize the life insurance industry in the United States, specifically their approach to addressing current climate risk and if they are taking proportional action.
