Average Life Insurance Rates

If you’re looking for life insurance, you have dozens of companies, term lengths and coverage amounts to choose from.

Price will no doubt factor into your decision and may even determine what type of policy you choose. To give you a snapshot of those prices, we compared average life insurance rates for men and women at different ages and for different policy lengths.

How life insurance rates are determined

Life insurance rates are based primarily on life expectancy, so many factors help determine rates, including gender, age, health and whether you smoke. That’s why it’s wise to buy life insurance as early as possible; the longer you wait, the more your rates will increase based solely on age.

What will a medical condition mean for your life insurance rates?

Here’s what a 20-year, $500,000 policy could cost you per year, and how that compares with what a healthy person pays.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, life expectancy in the United States is 81.2 years for women and 76.4 years for men. So women will always pay less for life insurance compared with a man of the same age and health with similar risk factors.

Waiting to buy will always be more expensive. For example, consider a 30-year-old who waits 10 years to buy a policy at age 40:

  • A 20-year, $500,000 term life policy will cost about $100 more per year.
  • By waiting 20 years until age 50, rates for a 20-year, $500,000 term life policy will more than triple.