Life insurance is a very useful method of providing for one’s own old age, or for one’s family in case of premature death. It is wise for everyone to insure his life; but it is certainly the duty of a married man who depends upon his daily work for his income. For if anything happens to him before he has been able to save enough to keep his family in comfort, those he loves best in the world may be left to starve.

How does the system of life insurance work? An insurance company , in return for certain monthly or yearly payments (called “premiums”) for a certain number of years, undertakes to pay you, at the end of the period fixed, a certain agreed upon sum of money, or to pay the same amount to your wife or family on your death, if that occurs before the term is up. For example, a young man of say thirty years of age, can insure his life for $ 10,000 to be paid to him when he is sixty years of age, or to his family if he dies before he reaches that age. The bargain between him and the company looks, at first sight, something like a bet; for the length of his life and the date of his death are quite unknown. If he lives to be sixty years of age, the company gains, because he will in thirty years have paid to it in premiums the whole $ 10,000; and the company will in the meantime have made a profit on the money by investing it. On the other hand, if he dies soon after he has “ taken out the policy”, the company loses; for it has to  pay his family $10,000 while it has received only a few years premiums perhaps only a few hundred dollars.

This being so, how can an insurance company carry on its business and make profit? Because insurance business is based upon a very careful and sharp mathematical calculation of the average number of yearly deaths in a certain population, and the average expectation of life at given age. Of course no one knows how long any particular man will live or when he will die; but carefully collected statistics do show what percentage of the population dies every year, how long on the average people of any particular age are likely to live. In this way a fairly safe average can be struck; and the premiums to be paid in, and the policies to be paid out, can be so balanced over a period of years that the company can make a profit and yet be able to meet all claims as they arise.