The three essays comprising this dissertation address life insurance, and consumer behavior with respect to life insurance, within the United States. The first essay functions as a qualitative primer in understanding the evolution of life insurance in America and includes a review of the determinants of life insurance demand for the first consumers to ever purchase policies as Americans, Presbyterian ministers. I argue that the Presbyterian Church played an important role in building the life insurance industry in early America, helping it evolve into the strong and important industry it remains present day. I posit the Church's need to maintain fund solvency, to both care for their congregations while also funding investments, resulted in a messaging shift from the very top of American Christian leadership via moral persuasion, resulting in persuasion bias. The secular commercial life insurance marketing strategies embraced this shift in messaging, resulting in a significant change in consumer behavior and contributing to industry growth. The second essay builds on this finding and empirically examines if consumers who identify as Christians in the United States have a significantly higher likelihood of owning life insurance. Using data from the Health and Retirement Survey, I find that consumers who identify as Christian do have a positive association with the likelihood of owning life insurance, and I believe this to be a novel finding. Additionally, I empirically identify how certain determinants of life insurance demand are unique to members of specific generational birth cohorts. Finally, the third essay empirically examines life insurance demand for consumer subgroups independently with a focus on the consumer subgroup at the intersection of race and sex, Black females. Building on consumer socialization theory and intersectionality theory, I find that the determinants of life insurance demand for the consumer subgroup of Black females, who as product users have traversed a very different path to the life insurance marketplace than any other consumer subgroup, are unique. Together, the research and findings within these essays contribute to the knowledge base surrounding consumer behavior with respect to the life insurance marketplace within the United States.