New Study Sheds Light on Americans' Real Risk of Disability

Americans are slightly less likely to suffer a long-term disability than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, yet those who do will likely experience it for a longer period of time. This is one of the main findings from a study released May 1, by the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education (LIFE), Washington, D.C., entitled, “The Real Risk of Disability in the United States.”Conducted by the global consulting firm Milliman, Inc., the study offers insights into disability risks based on gender, age, occupation and disability type by contrasting U.S. individual, long-term disability claim incidence between the decades of the 1970s/early 1980s and the 1990s.

“The good news is that the chances of suffering a long-term disability have gone down slightly over the past few decades, but the bad news is that the odds are still quite high and those who become disabled are out of work for much longer periods of time” said David F. Woods, CLU, ChFC, president of the LIFE Foundation. “Americans greatly underestimate the risk of becoming disabled and these findings should serve as a wake-up call for people to examine how they would survive financially if they were to be out of work for an extended period of time.”