The numbers, and where they come from.

I quote a lot of research across this site. Here it is in one place, each figure carrying its study, its year and its method, so you can check any of it rather than take my word for it. Where the research disagrees with itself, I have said so. Where it cuts against what I sell, it is on the page anyway.

What Americans actually own

52%of American adults own life insurance. A further 29% own none and say they need it, and 9% hold a policy they know is too small.[1]

63% → 52%Ownership in 2011 against 2026. Eleven points lost in fifteen years, while household debt and the cost of a funeral both climbed.[1]

Fewer households are covered now than a generation ago.

Share of American adults who own life insurance.

A decline like that never shows up as a statistic in anybody’s life. It shows up as a family discovering, in the worst week they will ever have, that there is nothing there.[1]

7–12×How far people overestimate the cost of life insurance. Even the youngest and healthiest applicants, the cheapest in the country to insure, guess high by that much — and cost is the reason 46% of them give for not buying.[2]

What the policies actually do

$100bn+is paid to life insurance beneficiaries in a single year, and every dollar of it goes to a household that kept its policy in force. That is the whole of it. Keep paying and the thing pays: the mortgage cleared, the funeral covered, the income replaced, and the people you love handed time instead of a bill. Nobody has ever regretted the premium at that point.[3]

1 in 14term customers stop paying each year, so most term policies are canceled before the term ends. That is much of why term is cheap, and it is the single thing that decides whether yours is ever worth anything.[4]

57%of permanent policies also lapse within ten years, usually because they were written larger than the household could carry. A policy you can keep beats a policy that looked better on the illustration.[4]

Weeks, not monthsA death benefit with a living named beneficiary is paid straight to that person. It never enters probate, the court cannot hold it up, creditors of the estate cannot reach it, and it is generally free of income tax. The beneficiary designation also overrides whatever a will says.[5][6][7]

Wills, probate, and the paperwork nobody finishes

Most people intend to leave things tidy. Most people have not.

Share of American adults who have a will, by age. Overall: 46%.

Gallup has asked since 1990 and the overall figure has never left the 44–51% band. Online-panel surveys put it lower again; the difference is survey method rather than a sudden collapse, which is why I quote the telephone poll and tell you which one it is.[8][9]

3%–7%What probate typically takes out of an estate, against the $1,000 or less most adults expect it to cost.[10]

36.7%of adults hold any advance directive at all, across a review of 795,909 people.[11]

A will does nothing until you dieIt carries no authority while you are alive. If a stroke leaves you unable to sign, a will cannot pay your mortgage, reach your bank or file your taxes. That needs a durable financial power of attorney, a separate document most people with a will still do not have, and without one your family must petition a court for conservatorship. Only about a third of Americans 55 and over have even named a health care power of attorney.[12][13]

Retirement income

4.1mAmericans turn 65 every year, most without the pension their parents retired on.[14]

54%of Baby Boomer and Gen X investors worry about outliving their money, up six points in a year.[15]

$110bnwas paid to annuity holders in one year, the most ever recorded.[3]

Almost everyone agrees with the idea. Almost nobody owns one.

Investors who accept an annuity protects against outliving savings, against those who hold one.

The second row is drawn as two in ten; LIMRA reports fewer than one in five.[15]

Health costs after 65

Medicare roughly halves the odds of owing money on medical bills.

Adults who say they currently owe money because of medical or dental bills.

It halves the risk rather than ending it. What remains is largely the gaps Original Medicare does not cover, with dental among the leading causes.[16][17]

7 millionMedicare beneficiaries spent more than a tenth of their income on the Part B premium alone.[18]

98%of over-65s with unpaid medical bills had health insurance. Covered and protected are not the same thing.[19]

10% a year, for lifeThe Part B late enrollment penalty, added for every full year you could have enrolled and did not. Separately, Medigap open enrollment lasts six months, happens once, and while it is open no insurer may ask a health question or decline you.[20][21]

The send-off

$255The one-off death benefit Social Security pays toward a funeral. Set in 1954, unchanged since 1982.[22]

$7,000–$18,000What a 2026 funeral actually runs, depending on burial or cremation and what the cemetery charges on top.[23]

How I use these

Every figure above names its study and its year. Where I show a range instead of one number it is because the research genuinely disagrees, and I would rather show you that than pick whichever number sounds most alarming. Percentages are rounded the way the source rounds them. Two of these statistics argue against products I sell, and they are here anyway, because a number you can only quote in one direction is not research — it is advertising. If you find something on this page that has gone out of date, tell me and I will correct it.

Sources

LIMRA & Life Happens, 2026 Insurance Barometer Study — limra.com ↑
Life Happens, They Don’t Understand Life Insurance and Overestimate Its Cost, from the 2025 Insurance Barometer Study — lifehappens.org ↑
American Council of Life Insurers, Life Insurers Fact Book — acli.com ↑
Daniel Gottlieb & Kent Smetters, Lapse-Based Insurance, American Economic Review, 2021 — faculty.wharton.upenn.edu ↑
MoneyGeek, Does Life Insurance Go Through Probate?, 2026 — moneygeek.com ↑
Statewide Probate, Are Life Insurance Proceeds Assets in Probate? Florida Law Guide, 2026 — statewideprobate.com ↑
Internal Revenue Code §101(a), income-tax treatment of death benefits, and §7702A, modified endowment contracts. ↑
Gallup, How Many Americans Have a Will?, May 2021 telephone poll, n=1,016, ±4 points — news.gallup.com ↑
Caring.com / YouGov, 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study — caring.com ↑
Trust & Will probate cost data and the Gallup cross-tabs, collected in Estate Planning Statistics, June 2026 — christopholivierconsulting.com ↑
Yadav et al., systematic review of advance directive completion among 795,909 people, Health Affairs, 2017. ↑
Minnesota Attorney General, Probate and Planning, chapter on conservatorship, guardianship and power of attorney — ag.state.mn.us ↑
AARP, cited in Jarvis Law Office, Incapacity Planning — about one third of Americans 55 and over have named a health care power of attorney. ↑
LIMRA, The 2026 Annuity Sales Outlook Remains Strong, January 2026 — limra.com ↑
LIMRA, Quarterly U.S. Retail Annuity Sales Top $120 Billion For the First Time, December 2025 — awareness and ownership figures, and the Alliance for Lifetime Income finding on outliving assets — limra.com ↑
KFF, Health Care Debt in the U.S.: The Broad Consequences of Medical and Dental Bills — kff.org ↑
KFF, What are the Consequences of Health Care Debt Among Older Adults? — kff.org ↑
KFF, Key Facts About Medicare Spending and Projections from the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report — kff.org ↑
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Issue Spotlight: Medical Billing and Collections Among Older Americans — consumerfinance.gov ↑
Medicare.gov, Avoid late enrollment penalties — medicare.gov ↑
National Council on Aging, Understanding Medicare’s Late Enrollment Penalties, 2026 premium figures — ncoa.org ↑
Social Security Administration, Lump-sum death payment — ssa.gov ↑
National Funeral Directors Association 2023 General Price List Study, carried forward for funeral-expense inflation to 2026. Cemetery plot, vault and marker are billed separately. ↑