Industrial life insurance, public health campaigns, and public communication of science, 1908-1951

Abstract

During the first half of the twentieth century, private life insurance companies in the United States provided an important locus for the public communication of science, through their support of public health campaigns. This paper provides a history of how and why three companies (the Metropolitan, the Prudential, and the John Hancock life insurance companies) drew on their strength in `industrial' life insurance (sold to the lower classes at low, weekly rates) to engage in public health reforms. Only the Metropolitan and the Hancock, however, became active in public communication of health information. The paper suggests that four key factors provided the context for the companies' activities: (1) legislative and social pressure for reform; (2) increases in profits associated with healthier (and therefore longer-lived) customers; (3) ideals of social reform held by individuals in positions of bureaucratic power within the insurance organizations; and (4) organized machinery for weekly contact with and distribution of information to policyholders as a result of the nature of industrial life insurance.