Royal London, the largest mutual life, pensions and investment company in the UK and Ireland, has today released research which shows that  while the number of men and women taking out life assurance policies is almost a 50:50 split, men’s policies were on average valued at 20 - 27% more than their female counterparts.

The company carried out the research after recent figures released by Eurostat showed that women in Ireland earned on average 14.4% less than Irish men.  Across Europe the figure was even higher, at 16.4%.

Royal London decided to take a look at their own data to see if there was a differential between the level of life cover men and women take out too. Not surprisingly, the difference was even higher.

Sales Manager at Royal London, Daragh Feely Broker commented, "Could the gender pay gap have something to do with this? Possibly. People put the protection in place in order to cover the financial loss that their illness or death would cause their family.

"The fact that men’s policies have more cover in place than women’s may well be because in Ireland, men earn more than women and husbands remain the primary breadwinners in many households."

He added, "As women’s rates of participation at the higher levels of the labour force +  continues to increase, one would expect that these pay level disparities and in turn different levels of life cover between men and women, will decrease in the future."

Source: www.businessworld.ie