A significant portion of our total mortgage insurance in force (and consequently our premiums earned) is derived from  policies written in prior years. Therefore, the amount of policy cancellations and the period of time that our policies remain in  force can have a significant impact on our revenues and our results of operations. One measure for assessing the impact of  policy cancellations on insurance in force is our persistency rate, defined as the percentage of insurance in force that remains on  our books after any 12-month period. Because most of our insurance premiums are earned over time, higher persistency rates  on monthly insurance policies enable us to recover more of our policy acquisition costs and generally result in increased  profitability. Conversely, assuming all other factors remain constant, higher persistency rates lower overall profitability on  single premium business, as the premium revenue for our single premium policies is the same regardless of the actual life of the  insurance policy. At December 31, 2012, the persistency rate of our primary mortgage insurance declined to  81.8% from 85.4%  at December 31, 2011, primarily due to declining interest rates and increased refinance activity . Historically, there is a close  correlation between low or declining interest rate environments and lower persistency rates, primarily as a result of increased  refinance activity. However, in recent years, despite historically low interest rates, our persistency rate has remained high, as  many borrowers have been unable to refinance due to home price depreciation, the weak housing market and limited access to  mortgage credit.  The following table shows the percentage of our direct primary mortgage insurance RIF and the associated percentage of  our mortgage insurance reserve for losses (by location of property) for the top 10 states in the U.S. (measured by primary  mortgage insurance RIF as of December 31, 2012) as of December 31, 2012 and 2011: 2.  Geographic Dispersion December 31, 2012 2011 Top Ten States RIF Reserve for Losses RIF Reserve for Losses California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.8% 10.5% 11.8% 11.8% Florida. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8 17.9 7.7 18.0 Texas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 2.9 6.1 3.2 Illinois. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 6.8 5.4 6.1 Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 3.8 4.6 4.2 New Jersey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0 6.2 3.9 5.2 Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 3.2 4.2 3.0 New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 5.9 4.0 5.3 Pennsylvania. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 2.9 3.2 2.5 Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 3.1 3.0 3.9 Total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53.7% 63.2% 53.9% 63.2%