Per this Wall Street Journal article, the life insurance industry is grappling with how to get policies into the hands of middle-class families more cost-effectively. Insurers have long used blood and urine tests to assess people’s health—a costly process.

Today, however, data-gathering companies have such extensive files on most U.S. consumers—online shopping details, catalog purchases, magazine subscriptions, leisure activities and information from social-networking sites—that some insurers are exploring whether data can reveal nearly as much about a person as a lab analysis of their bodily fluids, possibly saving insurers  $125 per applicant by eliminating many conventional medical requirements. Under one predictive model, the cost to achieve similar results would be $5. But are purchasing habits the best indicator of lifestyle, and at what cost to personal privacy does this involve?  Read more…