Insurance Coverage Partitions and Responsibility for Sinkhole Risk in Florida

Andrew Swift, University of Chicago

How will insurance markets structure responsibility for environmental risk as disaster losses and climate disruptions intensify? This paper addresses this question through the case of sinkhole insurance in Florida. Drawing on archival and interview data, I trace how state insurance policymakers have shifted responsibility and coverage for sinkhole risks during three periods since the 1970s: during the 1970s, sinkhole insurance was structured as a specialized policy provided by a public insurance program. Between the 1980s and early 2000s, policymakers enacted reforms to make private insurers responsible for sinkholes under generic home insurance policies. Finally, rising insurance losses during the early 2000s led policymakers to split sinkhole coverage from home insurance; this coverage was provided by both private and public property insurers. I theorize this process of merging and splitting hazards coverage as "coverage partition" and discuss the implications of this form of risk shift for theories of the individualization of environmental risk.

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 Presented in Session 108. Rule of Law, Policy Feedback, and Civic Participation