Does Batman need life insurance? How nearly 3 in 4 of Americans don’t understand life insurance need

It may sound weird to analyze the insurance need of a superhero, but doing so can be an interesting educational exercise.

In 2005, the LIFE foundation did a survey of 1,014 adults to get a sense of how Americans understand life insurance.

Each person was asked to identify which character has the greatest need for life insurance:

(a) Batman
(b) Fred Flintsone
(c) Harry Potter
(d) Marge Simpson
(e) Spiderman

A person who was unsure could also respond “don’t know.”

The results were surprising because people were way off in their understanding of life insurance.

What is your answer? Give it a thought before reading on.

The results of the survey: so many wrong answers!

The most frequent answer, at 28 percent, was Spider-man. The next common answer was Batman at 18 percent. In fourth place was Harry Potter at 15 percent. A lot of people, 12 percent, responded they were unsure and did not know.

That’s a lot of people who did not know or gave the wrong answer! Grouping all those categories means nearly 3 in 4 adults polled were not able to identify who needed life insurance the most.

Here’s a chart of the results, with the blue slices representing answers for characters that needed life insurance:

data found in this pdf

The acceptable answers

The person most in need of life insurance is Fred Flintstone. Why? He’s a middle aged breadwinner of a family with young children. If he were to pass away, Wilma and Pebbles would need to replace his income. Fred Flinstone would be wise to get plenty of life insurance coverage.

A less acceptable answer, though someone who does need life insurance, is Marge Simpson. Why? Even though Homer is the breadwinner, and more in need of life insurance, Marge is a homemaker and performs a vital role in keeping the family and house functional. As a former president of LIFE pointed out in the in this article, “Stay-at-home parents like Marge perform many household services that would be expensive to replace, and consequently have a significant need for life insurance.”

The other characters are really not in pressing need of life insurance. They all have dangerous jobs, but that does not mean they need life insurance. Batman is the secret identity of Bruce Wayne, a billionaire single playboy in great health. Why would he need life insurance? Spider-man is Peter Parker, who is also unmarried and at most provides some support for his aunt. Harry Potter is a kid and student, so again he does not need life insurance.

As a general rule, life insurance is needed to replace income or provide support for dependents. There are more examples of who needs and does not need life insurance in this article, or from this guide at Nolo.

There are many naunced issues for life insurance, like how much you need and the type of policy to get. But figuring out basic need should not be tricky.



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  • http://anomdebus.myopenid.com/ anomdebus

    Fred also has a dangerous occupation working in a rock quarry.

  • http://www.thenetizens.net/ MSP

    Interesting :)  

  • Anonymous

    I would argue that both Harry Potter and Peter Parker both need life insurance.  The reason is simple… Personal burial money.  Even if you are single with no one depending on your income but yourself, having some small amount of life insurance is important if you will be survived by any family at all.  Funeral/burial costs are not horribly expensive, but they aren’t “cheap” either.  The amount of life insurance you need to cover the cost of dealing with your corpse is rather low.  $25K would be more than enough.  “Kids” and young, single healthy adults are relatively inexpensive to insure.

    I would argue that Peter Parker is in more need of life insurance than Harry, because if Peter Parker died, the cost of his funeral & burial expenses would come out of his Aunt’s pockets.  Furthermore, if he could afford it, he might be able to provide a nice sum of cash to his Aunt to leave her set up well if he died.  His premiums would likely be inexpensive ($20/month say).  However, if he died as Spiderman and his identity was revealed, the insurance company would probably have a case not to pay the death benefit.

    Harry Potter, being an orphan, would likely be the least in need of life insurance.  He would be survived by his nasty muggle aunt and uncle, who wouldn’t spend a dime for his burial.  However, the wizarding world would take care of him, likely using magic, and he has access to his parent’s vault with plenty of money.  If I were Harry, I wouldn’t spend the money on life insurance.

    Presh-  A more interesting problem is “How much life insurance does a person need?”  There are lots of calculators out there, but I would be interested in a more mathematical/statistical analysis.

  • DrObviousSo

    If Batman and Spiderman, or really Bruce and Peter, could pass their physicals, they would probably be wise to purchase life insurance.

    But not ethical.

    Both are in an occupation that’ll likely kill them.  The EV of any reasonable life insurance policy is going to be positive for them if they hide the fact that they dress up like animals and get in fights every night.  You’d probably need to apply some sort of post-mortem discount, but they both have people in their lives they wouldn’t mind bestowing a bit of money on.  The only real problem is Peter’s streaky income.  He might have a hard time making regular payments without going into occasional consumer debt.

    Taking this one step farther, they are both comic book characters.  No one stays dead in the comics except Uncle Ben.  Batman just came back less than 12 months ago from being “dead.”  If they set up the right kind of trust, a temporary dirt nap could be very profitable.

    *and that’s not even true

  • http://www.termlifeinsurance.com/ TermLifeInsurance.com

    Doh! I would think Homer, Marge Simpson’s wife would also need home insurance. Besides being the family bread winner he doesn’t always make the smartest decisions!

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