Life insurance is almost as important as making a will, if you want your children to be looked after if you die. A will is easy enough; get hold of a will kit and do it today. But life insurance can be somewhat more tricky. In an age when the world is seeking equality between the genders, it can feel a little unfair to learn that men often pay more for their life insurance than women. Yet there are very good reasons for this, including the fact that insurers have several centuries worth of experience in giving out life insurance policies and assessing their cost to the company. Over the years, and especially since the advent of granular health data and life expectancy figures, it’s become clear that men are riskier to insure than women.
Here are four reasons why this is the case.
Work
The majority of workplace deaths occur in the male portion of the population, and this is often due to the fact that some specific male-dominated industries and job types are more dangerous than others. Whether it’s conflict reporting or working in hazardous conditions such as off-shore oil rigs or mines, the data clearly shows that men are more likely to take these professions than women – t least in the present day.
As such, men who take out life insurance while working in such jobs often face a more expensive premium as a result. This premium is simply generated by assessing the risk factors associated with a certain type of work and generating a price that the insurer feels comfortable with. If you’re interested in learning more about this process and the cost of different life insurance products, you can find useful information on the Future Proof insurance website who have lots of useful articles.
Health Indicators
Another reason that men tend to find that life insurance is more expensive for them than for women is that they engage in more behaviours that can risk their health. Among these are smoking and drinking heavily, which are some of the most common causes of long-term health conditions, and so-called “critical illnesses”, which can dramatically impact a life insurance policy. Obesity and high blood pressure are also generally higher among men than women, although recent data suggest that the gap is narrowing.
Given this skew in the data, it’s no wonder that men are considered to be a little riskier to insure, on the whole, than women. With health indicators that suggest that men are more likely to develop a range of illnesses, from cancer to heart attacks and strokes to untreated mental health issues, insurers have made adjustments to their underwriting process in order to account for these differences. It means men can end up paying more for a policy than a woman of the same age and background.
Life Expectancy
It’s well known that the life expectancy of men is lower than women’s, as The Guardian notes. This figure can often be misinterpreted to mean that women are simply made to live longer than men. This is not necessarily the case, although scientists have been poring over this question for many decades. The data that informs life expectancy figures are, in fact, drawn from the whole population and thus cover things like death in the workplace, death by suicide, death by violence, and death by long-term health conditions – all of which tend to afflict men at a higher rate than women.
As such, the final figure that is created in life expectancy charts shows that women, on average, live longer than men. This is data that the life insurance industry has been aware of for many years. Underwriters have adjusted their algorithms accordingly, and in the modern day, this data has been added to by the sheer volume of medical data we have our hands on since the digital revolution. The case has been made that women are less risky to insure than men in the health and life insurance market, and it’s difficult to argue against these findings.
Buying Behaviour
A final reason that men tend to pay more for their life insurance is that they are behaviourally less likely to take out a policy than women when times are good. Just as data suggests that men are more likely to put off seeing their doctor when they are presenting with symptoms, they are also less likely to think about purchasing. Life insurance policy earlier in life. This has been put down to risk appetites, which psychologists believe are higher in men than in women.
Nonetheless, this is one of the key aspects of life insurance gender differentials that you can actually address – by taking out an insurance policy sooner rather than later. By doing so, you’ll get a better policy, with a lower premium, than if you were to return to this question in five years’ time.
There you have it: some simple reasons why men tend to pay more for their life insurance than women.
