CIRJE-F-461. Nakata, Hiroyuki and Yasuyuki Sawada, "Demand for non-life insurance: A cross-country analysis", January 2007.

A number of existing studies on insurance demand report an apparently pathological result that insurance is a luxury good. Using cross-country insurance data and national wealth data, we resolve this spurious puzzle. While we found that the income elasticity of insurance demand is larger than unity, the wealth elasticity of insurance demand is smaller than unity at least for upper-middle and high wealth countries.