Wife insurance growing trend

Press, 12 July 1988, Page 5

Wife insurance growing trend

PA Auckland Wife insurance, which pays out enough money if a housewife dies for someone else to do her work, is an insurance trend taking off in New Zealand.

According to the insurance industry, it is a growth area and one that is here to stay.

One housewife, Susan, aged 27, married to a successful self-employed manufacturer, and with an 18-month-old son, said she was surprised to find it would cost her husband $6OO a week to pay someone to do the cooking, cleaning and other work she now does for nothing. "Six hundred dollars! I feel it is worth that much, but I didn’t realise what the time was worth,” said Susan, who declined to be named. Figures in a recent Australian survey show that if a housewife were to die at the age of 35, it would cost sAust3l9,ooo ($370,900) to employ someone to do her work for a lifetime. The figures were compiled by a Sydney actuary, Mr Ray Palmer, who estimates a mother, aged 25, to be worth sAust36l,ooo, based on a housekeeper being required for life and a nanny for two children

for five years. The estimate of $6OO was based on the lowest award rates an employer can pay in New Zealand — without taking into account all the overtime a housewife does, or holiday pay, sick pay, superannuation and other allowances. Housewives are worth a lot in economic terms and New Zealand insurance agents are becoming increasingly aware of this relatively new and lucrative market. The northern manager of a big insurance company, Mr Guy Garland, agreed with Australian counterparts who have predicted a boom in insurance for housewives. “The death of a wife can, in some places, place as much trauma on a family as the death of a husband,” Mr Garland said. He was talking about financial trauma. Susan said her successful self-employed manufacturer husband would certainly be lost if she were to die before the

baby became a man — or at least a boy. “He wouldn’t get out of a warm bed in the middle of the night if the child was sick and started crying. He’d just roll his eyes, mutter and turn over until the light went out.” Mr Brian Sheehy, the manager of N.Z.I. Life Insurance, said people were realising more and more what a housewife was worth and doing something about it. “Now the basic skills of a housewife are being recognised, so therefore he (the husband) has to get someone in to do her duties while he does what he has been trained to do, and that is work.” He said that in the past housewives had been partly to blame for the lack of recognition by not placing a higher value on themselves. Insurance for housewives has been growing over the last decade and women are much more aware of the need for personal protection, Mr Sheehy said.