At the national level, the difference between what women and men pay for car insurance is insignificant—less than 1%. But looking closer, down at the state level, the numbers tell a more interesting story.
The cost differences between men and women vary widely from state to state. Women now pay more in 25 states, and the gap between men’s and women’s insurance costs is growing, according to an analysis of national rates by The Zebra. This trend seems to run counter to studies that show men exhibit riskier driving behavior, and they’re more likely to be involved in fatal crashes.
Gender is one of many factors that go into determining your insurance rates, and 43 of 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) agree that it’s OK for insurance companies to charge men and women differently. But is that fair?
That’s one question we asked 1,013 Americans in a survey about what personal information they thought was fair to use in pricing their policies. Men and women generally agreed on the factors they considered both fair and unfair, but there was an interesting discrepancy in how men and women responded to the question of gender.
Women thought the consideration of gender in insurance pricing was much more unfair than men did. More than half of the women surveyed (55.2%) answered “unfair,” while about a third of the men did (34.2%). Similarly, only 21.1% of women considered gender to be a “fair” consideration, which 37.9% of men did.
