Millennials May Care Deeply About Long-Term Care Benefits

Workers in the “Millennial” generation — those born from 1979 to 2000 — may like seeing long-term care insurance (LTCI) options on the benefits menu even more than older workers do.

All workers combined say they like LTCI benefits almost as much as they say they like life disability insurance.

Workers seem to be much more interested in LTCI benefits than in benefits sometimes seen as LTCI substitutes, such as critical illness insurance and cancer insurance.

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Analysts at the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies have posted figures supporting those conclusions a new batch of data from the center’s survey program.

The Survey

The center has been hiring outside firms to help it conduct national worker surveys for 18 years. The newest data in the new report comes from a survey of about 6,372 U.S. workers, ages 18 and older, conducted from Aug. 9, 2017, through Oct. 28, 2017. All of the workers in the sample had full-time or part-time jobs and for-profit companies with five or more workers.

Center analysts compared the 2017 survey results with results from similar surveys conducted every year since 2013.

The center asked about a wide range of benefits, including major medical benefits, retirement benefits, life insurance, disability insurance, critical illness insurance and cancer insurance.

A copy of the full survey report is available here.

The Context

The analysts found that health insurance is the most valued benefit: 95% of the survey participants rated health benefits as very or somewhat important, and 78% rated health benefits as very important.

Access to a defined contribution retirement plan, such as a 401(k) plan, ranked second, with 88% of the participants ranking that as very or somewhat important.