Marin 'most insured' county in Bay Area, study says

Jan. 12--The proportion of Marin residents who have health, auto and life insurance is higher than in any other Bay Area county, a new study finds.

Marin was ranked the sixth "most insured" county in the state in the study, which was released this month by the financial technology company SmartAsset.

"This is a sign that people in the county are being proactive about their long-term planning," said AJ Smith, vice president of financial education at SmartAsset and one of the study's authors.

Roughly 95% of Marin County residents had health insurance coverage, according to the study, which used data from 2017. About 22% of residents had life insurance, and 86% of residents who are over the age of 16 had auto insurance.

"It's not shocking that Marin County is relatively high statewide in terms of insurance," said Robert Eyler, chief economist for the Marin Economic Forum. "When you have relatively high wealth and income, you tend to insure against loss of those things."

The median income in Marin has consistently ranked among the top in the state. In 2019, the median family income in the county was $136,800, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It's likely that Marin's proportion of residents with auto insurance is greater than in some neighboring Bay Area counties because fewer residents tend to own cars in urbanized areas, such as San Francisco, said David Stompe, an insurance agent in Novato working as an independent contractor for Farmers. According to the state Department of Motor Vehicles, there were 247,820 vehicles registered in Marin in 2018, the most recent year for which data were available. The state Department of Finance estimated that Marin's population was 262,326 that year.

"The more stuff you have, the more insurance you need," Stompe said. "There's a lot of people with wealth in Marin, and they have a lot of things to insure."

The study gave equal weight to each insurance category in determining each county's ranking. It used 2017 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Insurance Information Institute and the American Council of Life Insurers.

San Mateo County had the second-highest proportion of insured residents in the Bay Area, the study says. About 94% of residents had health insurance coverage, 24% had life insurance and 85% had auto insurance. San Mateo was ranked second in the region and 11th in the state, followed by Santa Clara County, which was ranked 12th in California.

San Francisco was ranked the lowest for insurance coverage in the Bay Area and 29th in California. About 95% of residents there had health insurance, 15% had life insurance and 77% had auto insurance, according to the study.

Mariposa County topped the list of the "most insured" counties in California. About 95% of residents there had health insurance, 17% had life insurance and 89% of residents above the driving age had auto insurance, the study says. Amador County ranked second in the state and Tuolumne County ranked third.

___

(c)2020 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.)

Visit The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) at www.marinij.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.