This paper explores the effects of short-run financial market behavior and consumer expectations on purchases of ordinary life insurance. The major objective of the paper is to develop information concerning the structural determinants of life insurance demand. In the paper, a model that interrelates demand for various financial assets is suggested and estimated. The demand for life insurance is a subject that apparently has received little systematic study and analysis. In view of the importance of life insurance companies in the economy as financial intermediaries, the relative paucity of research concerning demand is surprising. While there surely must have been private studies performed by individual companies and industry associations, there is a decided lack of published research on life insurance demand analysis, both from the standpoint of the estimation of structural determinants and from the standpoint of prediction.'