Survey: High-Income U.S. Residents Underinsured, Unconcerned

By Staff Writer

April 28, 2003 at 08:00 PM

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NU Online News Service, April 28, 2003, 1:19 p.m. EDT – Most U.S. residents with high household incomes say they have enough life insurance even though they have too little insurance to permanently replace their salaries, according to results of a new survey by Opinionsite, New York.

The researchers who conducted the survey, which was sponsored by Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Simsbury, Conn., used the Internet to poll U.S. residents with annual household incomes of $100,000 or more.

The researchers found that 65% of the respondents had less than $500,000 in life insurance and 11% had less than $100,000 in coverage.

Many financial professionals recommend that workers who have families to protect buy coverage with death benefits equal to at least seven times their annual salaries.

Only 4.3 % of the respondents bought life insurance for business planning, and only 16.8% bought life insurance for retirement planning, estate planning or wealth transfer. Seventy-eight of the respondents bought life insurance primarily to protect the incomes of their families.

But 38% of the respondents said they failed to review their life insurance coverage after major life events, and 6.8% said they never reviewed their coverage.

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