Haven Life Finds Big Male-Female Life Coverage Gap
The coverage-to-income ration appears to be higher for fathers than for mothers.
U.S. men may be buying more life insurance coverage per dollar of income than comparable women do.
Haven Life, a term life sales arm of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, has published data raising that possibility in a summary of results from an online survey of 385 consumers ages 18 to 55.
(Related: Life Insurance Awareness Starts at Home: Idea File)
All of the survey participants had children under the age of 18, meaning that they had an obvious reason to own life insurance. Most of the participants agreed that stay-at-home parents need life insurance.
But Haven Life found that the male participants had an average annual income of $72,482 and $423,102 in life insurance, meaning that they had about $5.80 in life insurance per dollar of annual income.
The female participants had an average annual income of $52,484, an average of $231,342 in life insurance, and just $4.40 in life insurance per dollar of annual income.
Haven Life also found a big gap between the amounts of coverage that uninsured men and uninsured women thought they should have.
The uninsured fathers in the sample said they thought they would eventually buy $355,348 in life insurance coverage.
The mothers without life insurance said they’d buy an average of $175,423 in coverage.
Resources
A copy of the Haven Life survey report is available here.
— Read Let’s Make Life Insurance Conversations More Mainstream, on ThinkAdvisor.
— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.