Participation in employer-sponsored insurance plans by workers ages 30 and under trailed the rate of their elders by as much as 20 percent in a comparison of participation by age group released by Automatic Data Processing Inc.
According to the study, which has followed insurance trends at 200 major companies for four years, 85 percent of workers 30 and younger were eligible for coverage. Yet for this year, just 53 percent opted for coverage.
The highest participation rate among those surveyed was to be found in the 50-59-year-old category, where 73 percent of those eligible chose to be covered. Other age groups were within spitting distance of that number — except for the millennials. In fact, that number is dropping over time.