Millennials Are Learning to Love Life Benefits
Maybe the change is due partly to worker demographic shifts. A Transamerica center has numbers.
Millennial workers love employer-sponsored life insurance benefits much more than they did even a few years ago.
The percentage of workers born from 1981 through 1997 who say life insurance benefits are somewhat or very important increased to 85% in 2017, from 73% in 2013.
The percentage of members of “Generation X,” or workers born from 1965 through 1980, who rated life benefits as somewhat or very important increased to 75%, from 67%.
The percentage of Baby Boomers, or workers born from 1946 through 1964, who gave life insurance benefits high ratings, fell to 65%, from 69%.
Analysts at the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies have posted those figures in a summary of results from a recent survey.
(Related: Millennials May Care Deeply About Long-Term Care Benefits)
An outside firm polled 6,372 U.S. workers, ages 18 and older, for the center from August 2017 through October 2017. All of the survey participants had full-time or part-time jobs at for-profit employers with five or more workers.
Millennial workers’ interest in some other benefits, including long-term care insurance, has grown over the past five years, but Millennials’ interest in some other benefits, such as defined benefit pension plans and defined contribution retirement plans, has increased only a little, or held steady, over that same period.
One explanation for Millennials’ growing interest in life insurance benefits may be that more are starting families. About half of Millennials are ages 30 to 37. Many of those thirtysomething Millennials have young children to protect.
Another possible explanation may be that African American workers and Hispanic workers tend to be more likely than White workers to rate life benefits as very or somewhat important, according to the Transamerica data.
Millennials are more likely to be African American or Hispanic than members of Generation X or Baby boomer generations, according to another analysis, from Pew Research.
About 34% of members of the Millennial generation are African American or Hispanic, compared with 30% of the members of Generation X and 22% of the Baby Boomers, according to Pew.
In 2017, the percentage of workers rating life insurance benefits as very or somewhat important was 71% for White workers, 76% for Asian and Pacific Islander workers, 86% for Hispanic workers and 89% for African American workers, according to the Transamerica center data.
— Read 3 Ways Voluntary Benefits Can Help Millennial Parents, on ThinkAdvisor.
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