According to Unum sales data, Americans are overwhelmingly pushing to age in place, rather than move to a nursing home for care. Not one group long-term care policy was purchased in 2007 to cover care in a nursing home only, the company said in a press release last week. Slightly more then 93 percent of inforce policies are used to cover some type of in-home care, and nearly 70 percent of group customers use their long-term care benefits for care that occurs in the home.

Fifty-two percent of purchasers are women, and the average age for a group long-term policy is 43.5. The industries demonstrating the greatest interest in long-term care policies are law firms, physicians, insurance brokerages, management consulting services and engineering firms.

Small and mid-size companies make up the majority of employers purchasing long-term care policies. Fifty-three percent of companies offering employer-funded policies have 250 or fewer employees, while 36 percent have fewer than 100 employees.