Student Loan Debt Could Be Reshaping U.S. Life Market: Haven Life Survey

Another top answer could reduce demand for annuities, and for life insurance-based income planning arrangements: 49% said student loan debt has kept them from saving for retirement.

Two other answers were less common but could reflect a structural change in how much life insurance and disability insurance young adults need: 28% said student loan debt had caused them to put off having children, and 20% said student loan debt had caused them to put off getting married.

Other Research

The Haven Life survey results support what academic economists have been saying. In 2015, for example, Michael Nau and colleagues concluded in a paper published in  the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility that a $1,000 increase in student loan debt led to a 1.2% decrease in the likelihood that a woman would become a parent in any given year.

A woman in that study had a 4.5% chance of becoming a parent in any given year if she had no student loan debt, and a 2.5% chance of becoming a parent if she had $60,000 in student loan debt.

The MIB Group Inc., a life insurance industry data-sharing organization, has reported that life insurance application activity trends have been much worse than trends for consumers ages 45 and oder for years.

MIB does not adjust the activity figures it publishes to reflect changes in the number of people in each age group, but it's possible that the weak application activity levels for the younger consumers reflect the effects of student loan debt, delayed child-bearing or similar factors as well as changes in the number of people in each age category.

Resources

A summary of the Haven Life survey results is available here.

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