An investigation by The Markup and Outlier Media shows how the law in Michigan allows car insurers to take location into account when deciding on a premium, penalizing the state’s Black population.
The journalists used a willing insurance agent to calculate how much the premium of Black car owners would change if they were to move to a predominantly white neighbourhood about 15 minutes away. In some cases they would save more than $5,000 a year. They also did a quantitative analysis and found the following:
Our analysis showed that for every single one of the state’s largest insurers that we were able to evaluate, most Black Michiganders’ premiums were dramatically adjusted upward based on where they lived. Averaging across those insurers, nearly two-thirds of Black Michigan residents lived in each company’s most expensive 20 percent of the state. Michigan’s least expensive locations were, on average, 87 percent White.
See: Michigan’s “Fair and Reasonable” Reforms Allowed Car Insurers to Charge More in Black Neighborhoods at The Markup.
Image by Joel Eastwood and Gabriel Hongsdusit, from the original article.