In the modern Western world, we tend to be insured by the state or for-profit insurers. We have privileged this system over mutual or micro-insurance, whose long and rich history we tend to forget. Yet, mutual and micro-insurance is becoming increasingly important, both in the Western and in the non-Western world and bears re-examination. This book traces the track record of mutual insurance from 1550 to the present, examining provisions for burial, sickness, unemployment, old age, and widowhood. The author seeks to address such topics as the type of risks micro-insurance covered between 1550 and 2015; how it was organized throughout its history; who provided the coverage; and how contributions, benefit levels, and conditions have changed. Importantly, the author explores why this system has worked through, and endured, the test of time. Mutual insurance can, for instance, overcome classic insurance problems such as adverse selection and moral hazards. The author demonstrates that the study of the position micro-insurance historically assumed in mixed economies of welfare presents interesting lessons for today's insurance market, as well as for today's mutualism.

This study analyses poor relief in pre-industrial Europe from 1800 to 1850, as a survival strategy of the poor and as a control strategy of the elites. It deals with poverty and the problems of the poor, but also with wealth and the concerns of the elites and of the middle classes. A simple model of poor relief is presented, based on insights derived from history, sociology and welfare economics. It is tested against the historical records of Amsterdam from 1800 to 1850. The study brings out some of the perennial problems of social policy, past and present, as well as some aspects of Old Regime charity, now vanished.

Marriage choice plays a crucial role in the formation and decay of social classes. Endogamy, the custom forbidding marriage outside one's social class, is thus central to social history. The study considers the factors determining who married whom, whether partner selection has changed over time and regional differences between Europe and South America. The volume also questions to what extent these factors have changed over the past three hundred years. The case studies presented are preceded by a state-of-the-art theoretical introduction on the determinants influencing trends in social endogamy. Each contributor has employed the same social-class scheme and thus the volume is the first comparative study of social endogamy in an historical context.