It depends on one’s economic situations? Are you in a country with a generous safety net or not? If you die, what benefits will you get and from whom, and how will it affect expenses. In the United States, survivors’ benefits from the government can be very liberal in some cases, or non-existent in others. In the US, renters may need life insurance more than home owners since often a mortgage includes (i.e. mandates) a term insurance to pay off the loan. Major employers usually offer liberal death benefits, but not a self-employed businessman or a family in hinukh. If you are poor to begin with, your family will still be poor without you, and may actually be better off since they will gain benefits – in which case spending money for life insurance that might better be spent on food and shelter and hinukh is a questionable deal. The higher one’s standard of living, the more you many need insurance (are you a family that assumes each wedding will cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, or are you content with getting married in the shul basement at minimal cost – the wedding in each case is halachicly the same, but the socio-economic differences are great).
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