We construct a new data set tracking the daily value of life insurers’ assets at the security level. Outside of the 2008–2009 crisis, a $ 1 drop in the market value of assets reduces an insurer’s market equity by $ 0.10. During the ?nancial crisis, this pass-through rises to $ 1. We explain this pattern by viewing insurance companies as asset insulators, institutions with stable, long-term liabilities that can ride out transitory dislocations in market prices. Illustrating the macroeconomic importance of insulation, insurers’ market equity declined by $50 billion less than the duration-adjusted value of their securities during the crisis.

We provide evidence of the stock market consumption wealth effect by using a local labor market analysis. An increase in local stock wealth driven by aggregate stock prices increases local employment and payroll in nontradable industries and in total, with no effect on employment in tradable industries. In a model of geographic heterogeneity in stock wealth, these responses imply an MPC of 3.2 cents per year and that a 20 percent increase in stock valuations, unless countered by monetary policy, increases the aggregate labor bill by at least 1.7 percent and aggregate hours by at least 0.7 percent two years after the shock.