Miami ? Disability insurance is expensive, hard to get and probably the one kind of coverage many workers will need as they age.

It’s like a bad joke, waiting to be told to the Baby Boomers, as they cross the 50-year-old line. The good news is you’re more likely today to survive major illnesses, such as heart disease or cancer. The bad news is that it will be costly to buy private disability insurance, which replaces part of your income if you’re out of work for an extended period due to illness.

“Most people think, it’ll never happen to me,” says Meridee Maynard, vice president for disability income at Northwestern Mutual. “But it does. The average disability claim lasts for 12.7 months.”

What’s more, the nation’s largest disability income insurer says the rate of disabilities is on the rise.

At UnumProvident, the leading disability insurer, the incidence rates of disability claims in 2001 and so far in 2002 is 16 percent higher than in 1989 and 1990. At the same time, death rates for those on disability have declined. Added together, UnumProvident says it is paying out more to those insured and that more people are reaching the maximum benefits allowed under their policies.

Indeed, the death rate for men with heart disease dropped 28 percent between 1980 and 1998, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And for women with cancer, it declined by 3 percent.

As it stands now, it’s clear that disability is probably an ordinary worker’s biggest risk.

Your chances of becoming disabled at any time in your working life are three in 10, according to the Society of Actuaries. That makes the risk of disability far larger than the risk of an accidental death.

A report by the Casualty Actuarial Society, published last July, says you are 3.5 times more likely to be injured at any point in your career than you are to die.

At the same time, only 25 percent of nongovernment workers have some sort of disability income insurance through their jobs, according to a study released last June by the National Academy of Social Insurance in Washington, D.C. Although there are few statistics on the subject, the experts assume even fewer people buy individual policies.

“Most people should be considering it,” says Robert Hunter, the Consumer Federation of America’s insurance expert. “It is the most undersold insurance, in part because the agents get more money selling life insurance.”

What’s more, the odds of becoming disabled grow worse as you age. The policies grow more expensive then, too.

The actuarial tables show the incidence of disability for men age 57 is practically triple the rate for men at age 47. For women, it’s almost double.

The price of this insurance, however, is a sticking point. It’s the most common reason people say they don’t buy individual disability insurance.

The typical annual premium for an individual policy is $1,271, according to LIMRA International, an industry group. A term life-insurance policy would run $300 to $400 for a healthy, 45-year-old, nonsmoking man. The average individual health-insurance policy, says the Kaiser Family Foundation, costs $454 a year.

But neither should be compared directly to disability insurance, agents say, because the risks of disability are so large. And life insurance policies pay off only once, in a lump sum. Disability insurance pays continuously for several years or until retirement. A $1 million total payout is not out of reach for someone who becomes disabled at a young age.

Most of the people who do have coverage, according to a survey made last year by the Consumer Federation and the American Council of Life Insurers, get it through their jobs for free or at reduced cost, as an employee benefit.

Even those people, however, don’t feel they are sufficiently protected. The CFA/ACLI survey showed that 56 percent of covered workers think their insurance wouldn’t be adequate if they did become disabled.