num_pages: 208
description: Using cliometric methods and records from six grand-lodge archives, A Young Man's Benefit rejects the conventional wisdom about friendly societies and sickness insurance, arguing that IOOF lodges were financially sound institutions, were more efficient than commercial insurers, and met a market demand headed by young men who lacked alternatives to market insurance, not older men who had an above-average risk of sickness disability. Emery and Emery show that many young men joined the Odd Fellows for sickness insurance and quit the society once self-insurance - savings - or family insurance - secondary incomes from older children - made it feasible for them. The older men, who valued the social benefits of membership and did not need the sick benefit, gradually became a majority and dismantled the IOOF's insurance provisions.
language: English
title: A Young Man's Benefit: The Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Sickness Insurance in the United States and Canada, 1860-1929
titlecomplete: A Young Man's Benefit: The Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Sickness Insurance in the United States and Canada, 1860-1929 (Volume 7) ... the History of Medicine, Health, and Society)
publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press