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Computer Graphics	Health Insurance - Demographic Factors and Income There is no unequivocal relationship between age and level of cover. Basic insurance is lowest for the 36-45 group and highest for 26-35 years. There is a general increase in top cover with age except for the 46-55 group. Intermediate declines with age except for the 46-55 group which is higher than all other categories except for under 25 years. Analysis by marital status shows an increase in top cover and decrease in basic for married respondents - though the differences are not great - and very little difference in intermediate cover. Similarly, occupation and level of education do not yield much information. Senior and mid-level management have the highest levels of both top and intermediate insurance but semi-skilled and clerical have larger proportions in top cover than the technical-support group which has higher incomes. Likewise, the group with the lowest education level has the greatest percentage in top cover and the lowest in basic. Again, the expected relationship between education level and incomes holds. Although there is not a great deal of difference across income levels for intermediate cover, there is a generally straight-forward positive relationship between income and level of cover. The mixed picture given by occupation and education levels seems to be due to complicated interrelationships among those factors, income and factors reported in the next section. As in the insured/uninsured analyses, the chief interest in the health status questions was the near absence of responses below good for self, spouse and dependents. Even when the good and very good categories are separated, the proportions in each level of cover differ little and again it would seem that self-assessed health status plays little part in the insurance decision. The relationship between gross medical expenses and the decision to insure is evident, also, in choice of level of cover for both of the two (separate) previous years. However, history of hospital costs, too, had some effect. Although over 84% of the insured reported hospital costs below $200 p.a. for both of the previous years, there was a clear increase in top cover, and decreases in both basic and intermediate covers, for those with cost above $200, with a much greater effect on basic. The effect was weaker overall for the immediately preceding year than for two years prior. Nevertheless, given that below $200 almost certainly means no cost for most people, there is a clear relationship between level of cover and a history of some hospital costs for the small proportion who did incur costs. Of particular interest is the association between medical expenses and level of insurance because here there was a good spread of respondents reporting costs from under $200 p.a. to over $500 p.a. One must assume that high medical costs serve as a general health-cost risk indicator because there is no necessary relationship between medical costs and probability of hospital admission. Analysis by changes in total health costs for the previous two (separate) years gave indications of the expected relationship also, but there was no effect for expectations of those costs over the next two (separate) years. In both years, those whose refunds had been less than premiums comprised over 75% of respondents and only about 7% had received refunds greater than premiums. There was a strong increase in the proportion on top cover where refunds were greater and none so responding had basic cover. To that extent, this could well be a factor in choice of cover but, with the great majority of those insured at all levels reporting histories of refunds less than premiums, this relationship appears to be relatively unimportant. The same conclusion applies to the expected relationship for the next twelve months. Frequency of review of general insurance policies had an interesting feature if it may be measured as an indicator of attitude to risk. For those who claimed to review and update their policies every year or every two years (about 75% of respondents), there was little difference in levels of cover and they were not very different from the overall percentages for the whole survey. Those whose review period was three years or greater had a much higher level of top and a lower level of intermediate cover. In view of the increases in premiums over the last couple of years for many insurances, this may well reflect inertia.