This paper contains the analysis of the determinants of life insurance demand in a panel of 93 countries over the time period 1980-2008, using three different indicators of life insurance consumption. For the cross-country analysis we first ran regressions on socioeconomic and institutional variables in that order, then considered the joint explanatory power of these variables for each dependent variable. Our results based on panel of 93 economies over 29 years support the fact that institutional variables like financial sector development and institutional development are significant determinants of life insurance demand. Furthermore, our estimations show that countries with higher income levels, higher savings rate, higher education level, lower social expenditure, lower urbanization ratio, result in higher levels of life insurance premium. A lower level of life expectancy and lower dependency rate are also associated with higher levels of life insurance premium. Countries with higher levels of income and saving, a more educated population, lower dependency and lower life expectancy have higher life insurance penetration and density.