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WIFE INSURANCE:
What
is the
Dollar
Value
of a Lady?
Not so many years ago I remember it clearly my
mother suggested that perhaps she ought to buy a life
insurance policy. My father was instantly outraged.
"Why?" he demanded. "Haven't I always taken care of you and the
children? I never expected you to contribute money to the family's sup
port. Why should you carry insurance?"
His reaction sounds unrealistic now, but it was not unique. A genera
tion or two ago, insurance for women was a rarity except for small
policies bought "to cover funeral expenses." The theory was that only
the breadwinner of the family needed full protection, and' the bread
winner, of course, was generally the man.
But the harsh economics of our time plus the greatly increased
number of women holding jobs outside the home have brought about
a sharp change in attitude.
In 12 million American families, both husbands and wives work. So do
their grown children, including daughters. Therefore, some 25 million
women art breadwinners today. They earn $55 billion a year an average
of $2,200 for each woman. Certainly the loss of this income would inflict
hardships on countless families.
The same holds true for wives who don't work outside the home. Such
a wife's worth is seldom considered unless her services are lost. Then
her husband suddenly discovers that it takes thousands of dollars a year
to replace her dedicated, around-the-clock services with hired house
keepers and baby sitters. As a result, wives who don't work as well as
those who do are increasingly coming to rely on life insurance as a
safeguard for their families' future.
The extent to which this has caught on is dramatixed by simple
figures: in the early 1940s, life insurance carried by women amounted
to $10 billion; note it totals more than tlOO billion.
One factor in this growth is the extraordinary rise of group life in--surance;
practically any woman who works cnn now participate in such
a plan. "Group" gives women an opportunity to buy life insurance at a
low rate: and if thev leave their loha for inv reaaon asv to rear a
family they usually find it foolish to abandon what they already own
So they convert their group protection to individual policies.
But apart from this, there have been manv navrhnlniric&l reasons that
have made women insure their lives.
To begin with, our women live in the most heavily insured country
in me WOrm. Hard as It la to believe we Amerirana anenri S3S hllllon a
year on our life-insurance premiums. (This does not include the addi
tional billions we spend on health, fire, accident, automobile, and other
kinds of protection.)
Uur Hie Dremiums actual v amount tn mnn than half nf the S68 billion
we pay in r eaeral income taxes ! You hear a vast amount nf irrinine over
ine nign income tax: but we have hm-nmn an inmiranre-minrieri that we
take this cost in our stride.
Tk ES1DES LIFE INSURANCE, women have insured themselves in manv other
LI ways, too. Alter all. in a country where anme 10 million nersons are
injured in accidents every vear. it's obvious that a woman can be hurt
. as seriously as a man; that a woman's surgery can cost as much as
man's; and that fire destroys all possessions alike.
... knsac ijrus ui insurance, women are now coverea aimosi as iumj
as men. More than 81 million Americana own annut form nf health-arid
acciaeni insurance, ana nere the women are not far behind the men
It IS only in the matter of life insurance that the ladies have been
laggard in tne past; and here, as we have seen, thev are finally asserting
themselves. To find out whv. I talked to manv women who had acauired
lite policies in recent weeks. I asked for their basic reasons.
une woman said: "My husband and I have two small children. If there
euic ui. us mat. dv me lime inev irrow uo. n)
;uuiig (kriuii wunoui a coiiege education is goinz to be at a disadvantage.
I don't want my kids to miss an education, no matter what happens to
my husband or me. We both carry life-insurance policies that will guaran
tee college costs. That was my primary reason for buying life insurance."
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