The microeconomic determinants of the demand for social insurance: from theory to application (survey of the employed population in Algeria).

Summary The problematic of the thesis is the low rate of social coverage in the Algerian labor market. 73% of the employed population in the private sector is not affiliated with social security according to the employment survey of the National Statistics Office (ONS, 2013). The objective of the thesis is to understand the reasons for this low social security coverage. The analysis of the Algerian social security system shows its capacity to provide social coverage to all categories of the employed population. However, the demand for social insurance remains low. The literature shows that the demand for social insurance is closely linked to consumer behavior over the life cycle. The most discussed behaviors in a social insurance context are: intertemporal choices, risk aversion, and social orientations. These variables, along with other socioeconomic and demographic variables, are the key variables in this thesis. We measure them through an experimental survey of 654 workers. We use lottery games to measure risk aversion and intertemporal choices. We implement the most explicit form of the dictatorship game to measure respondents' degrees of altruism. Our survey measures other characteristic variables that encourage debate. Analysis of the survey results shows the significant impact of these variables on the demand for social insurance.