THE DURABLE EXPERIMENT - STATE INSURANCE OF WORKERS COMPENSATION RISKIN THE EARLY 20TH-CENTURY

In the early 1910s state governments debated the private versus public underwriting. of workers' compensation risk. The choices they made es tablished the existing system today and set the stage for later debate s over the government's underwriting of unemployment, health, and disa bility risks. This article offers both quantitative and case-study ana lyses of states' original choices between public and private insurance . Monopoly state funds were adopted in some states because of an unusu al combination of strong unions and weak insurance and agricultural in terests. In other states, the emergence of progressive political coali tions played the decisive role.