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May 22, 2018 at 11:31 AM
Life insurers do sell policies that are great for low-income people, and they often sell coverage to people who are overweight, or even extremely obese.
For typical life insurers, however, the prime prospects are people with a relatively high income who maintain a healthy weight. When you help clients apply for coverage, the ones who maintain a healthy weight stand a better chance of getting approved for purchasing coverage at the lowest, most attractive rates.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classifies adults as having a “normal or healthy weight” if they have a body mass index, or BMI, from 18.5 to 24.9. For an adult standing 5 feet 9 inches tall, for example, that BMI range translates into a weight of 126 pounds to 168 pounds, according to the CDC.
(Related: 10 Top States for High Earner Obesity)
The CDC classifies adults as overweight if they have a BMI of 25 to 29.9, and as obese if they have a BMI of 30 or higher.
A man who was 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighed 246 pounds, with a BMI of 34.3, might pay $330 more per year for $500,000 in life insurance coverage than an otherwise identical man who weighed 196 pounds, with a BMI of 27.3, and was just a bit overweight, according to LifeInsure.com.
One of the best sources of state, county and metropolitan area weight data is the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey program.
When the CDC reports BRFSS data, the highest income category included is for annual household income of $50,000 or more.
Here, in the gallery above, is a look at the 10 states in which the top-earning adults were least likely to be obese in 2016.
Fewer than 25% of the top-earning adults were obese in 2016 in each of those 10 states.
In the 10 states with the worst performance on this indicator, more than 30% of the top-earning adults were obese in 2016.
The median 2016 obesity rate for high-earning adults in all 50 states was about 28%.
The complete 2016 BRFSS data set is available here.
A smaller, more manageable version of the overweight and obesity data is available here.
— Read 10 States Where the Millennials Are More Obese Than the Seniors on ThinkAdvisor.
— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on Facebook and Twitter.
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