Life insurance buys vs. needs: an infographic

We’ve long tracked in this space the alarmingly high number of Americans who remain uninsured. Last September, LIMRA pegged the life insurance “coverage gap” — or the total of life insurance needs less life insurance in-force — at a whopping $16 trillion. That’s up from $15 trillion in 2013.

One reason for the gap is the perception that Americans have about the cost of life insurance. As we noted in the prefacing text to an infographic we posted in August, many U.S. consumers overestimate the cost of life insurance: millennials by 213 percent; and Gen Xers by 119 percent.

Now comes new data from Life Happens, a 21-year-old organization that coordinates campaigns to raise consumer awareness about the value of life, disability income and long-term care insurance; that serves as a resource to agents and brokers who sell these products. Based on a September 2015 online poll of 1,022 U.S. adults conducted by KRC Research, the survey data points to a “wide disconnect between the values individuals hold, and the actions they take to meet those goals.”

In respect to life insurance, the disconnect is particularly jarring. Whereas less than half of the survey respondents say they would buy life insurance for the benefit of loved ones in the event of their passing, more than 40 percent also acknowledge that surviving family members would “feel the financial impact” of their death within months.