problem solving questions year 7

Algebra Questions and Problems for Grade 7

Grade 7 algebra questions and problems with detailed solutions are presented. Questions on simplifying expressions, solving equations, factoring expressions,....are included.

• 12 x 3 + 5 x 2 + 4 x - 6 for x = -1
• 2 a 2 + 3b 3 - 10 for a = 2 and b = -2
• (- 2 x - 1) / (x + 3) for x = 2
• 2 + 2 |x - 4| for x = - 4
• - 2( x - 8) + 3 (x - 7)
• 2 (a + 1) + 5b + 3(a + b) + 3
• a (b + 3) + b (a - 2) + 2 a - 5 b + 8
• (1 / 2) (4x + 4) + (1 / 3)(6x + 12)
• 4 ( - x + 2 - 3(x - 2) )
• x / y + 4 / y
• (2 x / 4 ) × (1 / 2)
• (3 x / 5 ) ÷ (x / 5)
• 3 x 2 × 5 x 3
• [ (2 y) 4 9 x 3 ] ÷ [ 4 y 4 (3 x) 2 ]
• 24 x + 18 y
• 2 x + 5 = 11
• 3 x = 6 / 5
• 3 (2 x + 2) + 2 = 20
• Rewrite the expressions 3 × a × a × a - 5 × b × b using exponential.
• A rectangle has a length given by 2 x + 3 units, where x is a variable. The width of the rectangle is given by x + 1 units. Find the value of x if the perimeter of the rectangle is equal to 32.
• A rectangle has a length given by 2x - 1 units, where x is a variable. The width of the rectangle is equal to 3 units. Find the value of x if the area of the rectangle is equal to 27.
• 45% of the students in a school are male? Find the ratio of the number of female to the total number of male students in this school.
• A car travels at the speed x + 30 kilometers in one hour, where x is an unknown. Find x if this car covers 300 kilometers in 3 hours?
• Solve the proportion : 4 / 5 = a / 16
• Find a if the ordered pair (2 , a + 2) is a solution to the equation 2 x + 2 y = 10?
• Find the greatest common factor of the numbers 25 and 45.
• Write the number " one billion, two hundred thirty four million, seven hundred fifty thousand two " using digits.
• Write the number 393,234,000,034 in words.
• Find the lowest common multiple to the numbers 15 and 35.
• Find x if 2 / 3 of x is 30?
• What is 20% of 1 / 3?
• Order 12 / 5 , 250% , 21 / 10 and 2.3 from the smallest to the largest.
• The sum of 3 positive consecutive integers is equal to 96. Find the largest of these numbers.
• Dany scored 93 in physics, 88 in mathematics, and a score in chemistry that is double his score in geography. The average score of all 4 courses is 79. What were his scores in chemistry and geography?
• Linda scored a total of 265 points in mathematics, physics and English. She scored 7 more marks in mathematics than in English and she scored 5 more marks in physics than in mathematics. Find her scores in all three subjects.
• There are bicycles and cars in a parking lot. There is a total of 300 wheels including 100 small wheels for bicycles. How many cars and how many bicycles are there?
• The difference between two numbers is 17 and their sum is 69. Find the largest of these two numbers.

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Free Year 7 Maths Test With Answers And Mark Scheme: Mixed Topic Questions

Beki Christian

This year 7 maths test is suitable for the majority of year 7 students and contains questions on a wide variety of topics. The test includes both procedural questions and applied problems.

This test is designed to be taken at the end of year 7. If you’re looking for a test for the start of year 7, we recommend you download the free year 6 maths test instead as it will provide a much fairer assessment of what students know.

What topics are likely to be covered in Year 7 maths

Year 7 maths is likely to feel a little different to primary school maths. Students will be introduced to a number of new topics, as well as new vocabulary and methods for tackling problems. They will cover topics from across all of the 6 areas of maths: number, ratio and proportion, algebra, geometry, statistics and probability. 

Although there is no set list of topics that students need to cover in Year 7, schools often choose to focus on number topics during Year 7. It is important that students develop their skills with mental and written calculations with whole numbers and decimals and working with fractions, percentages and ratios. They will need skills in these areas to be able to tackle problems across the curriculum as they progress through KS3. 

Algebra and the use of algebraic notation is also a focus during Year 7 level maths. Again, it is important that students have a good foundation in algebra as they will build on this throughout their  mathematical journey up to KS4 and beyond. 

Other topics that are likely to be covered in Year 7 include:

• Place value
• Negative numbers
• Order of operations
• Area and perimeter of 2D shapes
• Charts and graphs
• Probability

Check out our comprehensive revision guides and maths worksheets for these topics here: 

• Place value  
• Order of operations ( BIDMAS )
• Types of graphs
• Averages ( Mean, Median, Mode )

Many Year 7 students find the transition to secondary school a challenge.

Some students may need focused support to plug gaps and grow in confidence .

You can give your target students a smoother transition from KS2 to KS3 with personalised one to one tuition from specialist tutors with Third Space Learning. Our lessons cover content from Year 5-7 and are designed by former teachers and pedagogy experts and are designed to encourage students towards independent practice.

Year 7 maths questions

Students in Year 7 will be challenged to answer a variety of questions. Some questions will be procedural and will focus on learning and practising new methods. Other questions will ask students to apply their knowledge to solve problems and work through functional skills tasks. At this stage, most problems will not be too complicated, with perhaps one or two steps.

Year 7 Maths Test

Download this FREE Year 7 Maths Test to check the progress of your students. Designed to be delivered at the end of the year with questions on a range of topics from across the KS3 curriculum. Includes answers and mark scheme.

About this Year 7 maths test

This Year 7 test contains 16 questions of increasing difficulty. The test begins with questions accessible to the vast majority of Year 7 students, with questions becoming progressively more challenging. The maths topics covered in the test are: 

The total number of marks available for this test paper is 50. 

How to use this Year 7 maths test

Our Year 7 maths test is designed to be taken as an end of year exam . The test is one hour long , allowing it to be sat within a lesson. 

Students should be encouraged to show all of their working when completing the test, as in most maths practice papers. Students may use a calculator during the test. 

Mark scheme and grade boundaries

Don’t forget to download our test, which is accompanied with a mark scheme. The recommended grade boundaries are:

Year 7 maths test

Questions for our Year 7 maths test follow below. Download our FREE Year 7 maths test for an easy-to-print format, mark scheme and answers.

Thinking about marking already? You could consider using the mark scheme in our download and have students peer assess. You could also consider using whole class feedback to reduce your workload – we’ve included a free template in our blog!

Other recommended KS3 resources

• Articles on  Year 7 Maths ,  Year 8 Maths  and  Year 9 Maths
• Year 8 maths test
• Year 9 maths test
• Fun maths problems for KS2 and KS3
• 30 problem solving maths questions

By the end of Year 7, students will have made a good start to the KS3 maths curriculum. They will have gained a basic understanding of many topics across the six main areas of maths; number, ratio and proportion, algebra, geometry, statistics and probability.  These may include: • Number: fractions, decimals, percentages, place value, negative numbers, factors and multiples, rounding, order of operations • Algebra: manipulating algebraic expressions, solving simple linear equations, using formulae, sequences, straight line graphs • Ratio, proportion and rates of change: ratio, direct proportion, conversion rates • Geometry and measures: area and perimeter, angles, properties of polygons, transformations, construction and loci • Probability: basic probability, sample space diagrams, Venn diagrams • Statistics: data collection, pie charts, scatter diagrams, averages It is worth noting that different schools cover the curriculum in different orders and there is no set list of what a student should know by the end of Year 7. You can find a full list of topics that students should cover by the end of KS3 here .

Year 7 maths lessons build on the maths done in primary school as well as introducing a number of new topics and new vocabulary.  You can prepare for Year 7 maths by ensuring you are confident with your number work, including knowing your times tables, being able to use mental and written methods for calculations  and having an understanding of fractions. Some good resources to help you with this are: • Revision guides and maths worksheets available on our website:  • Subscription sites that your school may use, for example Sumdog or ttrockstars • CGP workbooks or other maths revision guides/workbooks

By the end of Year 7, most students will be working between GCSE grades 1 and 3. Different schools use different types of levels for Key stage 3 maths so it is best to check how your school assigns levels to your work.

DO YOU HAVE STUDENTS WHO NEED MORE SUPPORT IN MATHS?

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Learn how the programmes are aligned to maths mastery teaching or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school’s needs and how we can help.

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FREE Guide to Maths Mastery

All you need to know to successfully implement a mastery approach to mathematics in your primary school, at whatever stage of your journey.

Ideal for running staff meetings on mastery or sense checking your own approach to mastery.

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Review articles, unit 1: proportional relationships, unit 2: rates and percentages, unit 3: integers: addition and subtraction, unit 4: rational numbers: addition and subtraction, unit 5: negative numbers: multiplication and division, unit 6: expressions, equations, & inequalities, unit 7: statistics and probability, unit 8: scale copies, unit 9: geometry.

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Year 7 (yr 8 nz, ks 2/3).

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There are many types of problems in mathematics. The answer or solution to a problem can often be obtained in several ways.

Solving problems in mathematics can be frustrating... but also very satisfying.

Most problems can be solved by following a plan or strategy.

The following plan, which has four key steps, works well:

This plan can be summarised:

READ ---> PLAN ---> SOLVE ---> ANSWER

Other Hints on Problem Solving

Every problem is different but there are several approaches you can take which may result in progress being made:

• Estimate the answer
• Use trial and error (guess and check) until you get the correct answer.
• Look for patterns
• Use algebra and form equations
• Make a table or list
• Draw a diagram, graph or make a model
• Break the problem up into parts.

Types of Problems

Example 1 A rectangle is twice as long as it is wide. Its perimeter is 24 cm, What is its area?

A width of 4 cm with a length of 8 cm gives the required perimeter. Thus, the area is 4 × 8 = 32 cm 2

Therefore the width = 4 cm and the height = 8 cm The area = 8 × 4 = 32 cm 2

What are the next 3 numbers in the sequence 2, 5, 10, 17,...?

You would expect the gap between 17 and the next number to be 9, so the next number is 26. Following this pattern the next numbers are 37 and 50.

Method 2 Use a table:

Try to see a connection between the position of the number and the number itself.

The connection is that if you  SQUARE  the first number and  ADD   ONE  you get the sequence number.

Method 3 Draw a graph:

The next three numbers (in  blue ) can be found from the graph . These sequence graphs are often straight lines.

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Addvance Maths

Free online maths revision for gcse, a-level and ib maths..

Year 7 Revision Guide

British Curriculum (GCSE and IGCSE) revision guide for all of Year 7 Maths. This includes full animated and professional video lessons, worksheets, activities and extension challenges. Below is a full list of topics and resources to revise Year 7 Maths at ease. All Year 7 Videos can be found here. Check out our revision page for tips on how to revise maths effectively .

New! 🎉 Year 7 Fact Sheet! (download)

1. Integers & BIDMAS

2. introduction to algebra, 3. symmetry and coordinates, 4. fractions, 5. fractions to decimals, 6. number properties, 7. parts of a circle.

UKMT Practice

Our UKMT guide will help you develop your mathematical thinking! UKMT questions are great problem solving practice to help you master mathematical thinking skills.

8. Rounding

9. angles in polygons and parallel lines, 10. perimeter and area of 2d shapes, 11. graphical representation of data, 12. linear equations, 13. percentages, 14. mean, median, mode and range, 15. 3d shapes.

For more extension activities, please visit our UKMT resources page . We also have a general page for more revision resources .

We hope this was useful, however we’d also appreciate your feedback .

Year 7 Retention Sheet! Use the link above to find weekly practice sheets to master Year 7 maths!

Disclaimer: This is a just a guide. Some schools may follow a different curriculum, and may teach different topics in different years. Addvance Maths is not responsible for content on external websites.

If you find an error, please let us know by emailing: [email protected]

Ready to test your knowledge?

Below is the Year 7 quiz! It’s a quick and easy way to see how much you have understood. The questions are in the same order as the revision guide above. So if you don’t understand the answer to a question, just use the revision guide above to revise that topic again! Simple! Good luck, remember to use pen and paper to calculate your answers. 😊 Click here to open in a new tab if you prefer.

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Visual maths worksheets, each maths worksheet is differentiated and visual.

Year 7 Maths Worksheets

Maths Worksheets / Year 7 Maths Worksheets

A superb range of maths worksheets for secondary school children in year 7 (aged 11-12). Cazoom Maths is a trusted provider of maths worksheets for secondary school children, and this set of maths worksheets is ideal for students in the first year of high school. Our mathematics resources are perfect for use in the classroom or for additional home learning, and are excellent Year 7 maths practice material. Our maths worksheets are used by over 30,000 teachers, parents and schools around the world and we are a Times Educational Supplement recommended resource for helping key stage 3 and key stage 4 students learn mathematics.

Get 30 of our favourite Maths worksheets in your inbox now!

Maths worksheets for year 7 students.

Try some free sample year 7 maths worksheets

Outstanding Year 7 Maths Worksheets

• Separate answers are included to make marking easy and quick.
• Over 350 pages of the highest quality year 7 maths worksheets. Each worksheet is differentiated, including a progressive level of difficulty as the worksheet continues.
• Single user licence for parents or teachers. Separate school licences are also available.
• Single digital pdf download, with worksheets organised into high level chapters of Algebra, Statistics, Number and Geometry, and further by subtopics. See below for the extensive range of sheets included.

List of Topics

See below the list of topics covered. All our maths worksheets can be accessed here .

• Expanding Brackets
• Factorising
• Inequalities
• Linear Functions
• Real Life Graphs
• Rearranging Equations
• Simplification
• Solving Equations
• Substitution
• Calculator Methods
• Fractions Decimals Percentages
• Mental Methods
• Negative Numbers
• Percentages
• Place Value
• Types of Number
• Written Methods
• Area and Perimeter
• Bearings Scale and Loci
• Compound Measures
• Constructions
• Coordinates
• Lines and Angles
• Similarity and Congruence
• Transformations
• Volume and Surface Area
• Histograms and Frequency Polygons
• Mean Median Mode
• Pie Charts and Bar Charts
• Probability
• Scatter Graphs
• Stem-and-Leaf Diagrams
• Two-Way Tables and Pictograms

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The resources on this page will hopefully help you teach AO2 and AO3 of the new GCSE specification - problem solving and reasoning.

This brief lesson is designed to lead students into thinking about how to solve mathematical problems. It features ideas of strategies to use, clear steps to follow and plenty of opportunities for discussion.

The PixiMaths problem solving booklets are aimed at "crossover" marks (questions that will be on both higher and foundation) so will be accessed by most students. The booklets are collated Edexcel exam questions; you may well recognise them from elsewhere. Each booklet has 70 marks worth of questions and will probably last two lessons, including time to go through answers with your students. There is one for each area of the new GCSE specification and they are designed to complement the PixiMaths year 11 SOL.

These problem solving starter packs are great to support students with problem solving skills. I've used them this year for two out of four lessons each week, then used Numeracy Ninjas as starters for the other two lessons.  When I first introduced the booklets, I encouraged my students to use scaffolds like those mentioned here , then gradually weaned them off the scaffolds. I give students some time to work independently, then time to discuss with their peers, then we go through it as a class. The levels correspond very roughly to the new GCSE grades.

Some of my favourite websites have plenty of other excellent resources to support you and your students in these assessment objectives.

@TessMaths has written some great stuff for BBC Bitesize.

There are some intersting though-provoking problems at Open Middle.

I'm sure you've seen it before, but if not, check it out now! Nrich is where it's at if your want to provide enrichment and problem solving in your lessons.

MathsBot  by @StudyMaths has everything, and if you scroll to the bottom of the homepage you'll find puzzles and problem solving too.

I may be a little biased because I love Edexcel, but these question packs are really useful.

The UKMT has a mentoring scheme that provides fantastic problem solving resources , all complete with answers.

I have only recently been shown Maths Problem Solving and it is awesome - there are links to problem solving resources for all areas of maths, as well as plenty of general problem solving too. Definitely worth exploring!

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Maths Problem Solving Booklets

Subject: Mathematics

Age range: 11-14

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

23 August 2022

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Maths problem solving booklets covering a wide range of mathematical problems designed to improve problem solving strategies as well as numeracy and mathematical ability.

Designed to be printed as A5 booklets.

Disclaimer: These are free because the problems are from a wide variety of sources, most of which I have forgotten. I am a maths problem magpie and collect maths problems wherever I find them. All I have done is bundled these ones up to make it convienent.

If you find a problem that is yours and you don’t want it used please comment and I’ll remove it - cheers.

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Year 7 Problem Solving

Year 7 Problem Solving - Displaying top 8 worksheets found for this concept.

Some of the worksheets for this concept are Year 7, Handouts emotional regulation social skills problem solving, Word problem practice workbook, Problem solving booklet, Work decision making problem solving, Year 2 use arrays reasoning and problem solving, Maths practical problem solving work, Reasoning problem solving.

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Ideas and resources for teaching secondary school mathematics

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30 August 2018

Year 7 maths activities.

7 comments:

I can't tell you how many times you've posted a set of resources which are exactly what I need for the following week :D Also a great reminder of the awesome Colin Foster's activities. Thanks for all the hard work you put in - it's very much appreciated!

Thank you! I'm so pleased it's helpful.

Thank you :-)

These are great! The link to the number mazes task appears to be broken however. Any idea where I could find an alternative copy of these?

Hi. Frustratingly, it looks like all of Erich Friedman's puzzles have now been removed from the Stetson website, so I will remove this activity from the blog post. But if you still want to use them, I did download some (but not all) last year: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mV1s6550uQacr1IMqRMLeM5_F2Btw9xm/view?usp=sharing

If you would like something a bit different for Year 7 to consolidate multiplication why not check out my workshop on the slide rule presented at #mathsconf26 (at 13:56mins to 23:31mins). https://completemaths.com/mathsconf/26. They'll learn something about the slide rule and practise multiplication at the same time. Does require them to be able to fold paper in half accurately! I know you love the slide rule. Thank you for another great Gems post. Jenny

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The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System

A times investigation found climate change may now be a concern for every homeowner in the country..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. And this is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, my colleague, Christopher Flavelle, on a “Times” investigation into one of the least known and most consequential effects of climate change — insurance — and why it may now be a concern for every homeowner in the country.

It’s Wednesday, May 15.

So, Chris, you and I talked a while ago about how climate change was really wreaking havoc in the insurance market in Florida. You’ve just done an investigation that takes a look into the insurance markets more broadly and more deeply. Tell us about it.

Yeah, so I cover climate change, in particular the way climate shocks affect different parts of American life. And insurance has become a really big part of that coverage. And Florida is a great example. As hurricanes have gotten worse and more frequent, insurers are paying out more and more money to rebuild people’s homes. And that’s driving up insurance costs and ultimately driving up the cost of owning a home in Florida.

So we’re already seeing that climate impact on the housing market in Florida. My colleagues and I started to think, well, could it be that that kind of disruption is also happening in other states, not just in the obvious coastal states but maybe even through the middle of the US? So we set out to find out just how much it is happening, how much that Florida turmoil has, in fact, become really a contagion that is spreading across the country.

So how did you go about reporting this? I mean, where did you start?

All we knew at the start of this was that there was reason to think this might be a problem. If you just look at how the federal government tracks disasters around the country, there’s been a big increase almost every year in the number and severity of all kinds of disasters around the country. So we thought, OK, it’s worth trying to find out, what does that mean for insurers?

The problem is getting data on the insurance industry is actually really hard. There’s no federal regulation. There’s no government agency you can go to that holds this data. If you talk to the insurers directly, they tend to be a little reluctant to share information about what they’re going through. So we weren’t sure where to go until, finally, we realized the best people to ask are the people whose job it is to gauge the financial health of insurance companies.

Those are rating agencies. In particular, there’s one rating company called AM Best, whose whole purpose is to tell investors how healthy an insurance company is.

Whoa. So this is way down in the nuts and bolts of the US insurance industry.

Right. This is a part of the broader economy that most people would never experience. But we asked them to do something special for us. We said, hey, can you help us find the one number that would tell us reporters just how healthy or unhealthy this insurance market is state by state over time? And it turns out, there is just such a number. It’s called a combined ratio.

OK, plain English?

Plain English, it is the ratio of revenue to costs, how much money these guys take in for homeowner’s insurance and how much they pay out in costs and losses. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. If not, you’re in trouble.

So what did you find out?

Well, we got that number for every state, going back more than a decade. And what it showed us was our suspicions were right. This market turmoil that we were seeing in Florida and California has indeed been spreading across the country. And in fact, it turns out that in 18 states, last year, the homeowner’s insurance market lost money. And that’s a big jump from 5 or 10 years ago and spells real trouble for insurance and for homeowners and for almost every part of the economy.

So the contagion was real.

Right. This is our first window showing us just how far that contagion had spread. And one of the really striking things about this data was it showed the contagion had spread to places that I wouldn’t have thought of as especially prone to climate shocks — for example, a lot of the Midwest, a lot of the Southeast. In fact, if you think of a map of the country, there was no state between Pennsylvania and the Dakotas that didn’t lose money on homeowner’s insurance last year.

So just huge parts of the middle of the US have become unprofitable for homeowner’s insurance. This market is starting to buckle under the cost of climate change.

And this is all happening really fast. When we did the Florida episode two years ago, it was a completely new phenomenon and really only in Florida. And now it’s everywhere.

Yeah. And that’s exactly what’s so striking here. The rate at which this is becoming, again, a contagion and spreading across the country is just demolishing the expectations of anyone I’ve spoken to. No one thought that this problem would affect so much of the US so quickly.

So in these states, these new places that the contagion has spread to, what exactly is happening that’s causing the insurance companies to fold up shop?

Yeah. Something really particular is happening in a lot of these states. And it’s worth noting how it’s surprised everyone. And what that is, is formally unimportant weather events, like hailstorms or windstorms, those didn’t used to be the kind of thing that would scare insurance companies. Obviously, a big problem if it destroys your home or damages your home. But for insurers, it wasn’t going to wipe them out financially.

Right. It wasn’t just a complete and utter wipeout that the company would then have to pony up a lot of money for.

Exactly. And insurers call them secondary perils, sort of a belittling term, something other than a big deal, like a hurricane.

These minor league weather events.

Right. But those are becoming so frequent and so much more intense that they can cause existential threats for insurance companies. And insurers are now fleeing states not because of hurricanes but because those former things that were small are now big. Hailstorms, wildfires in some places, previous annoyances are becoming real threats to insurers.

Chris, what’s the big picture on what insurers are actually facing? What’s happening out there numbers-wise?

This is a huge threat. In terms of the number of states where this industry is losing money, it’s more than doubled from 10 years ago to basically a third of the country. The amount they’re losing is enormous. In some states, insurers are paying out $1.25 or even $1.50 for every dollar they bring in, in revenue, which is totally unsustainable.

And the result is insurers are making changes. They are pulling back from these markets. They’re hiking premiums. And often, they’re just dropping customers. And that’s where this becomes real, not just for people who surf balance sheets and trade in the stock market. This is becoming real for homeowners around the country, who all of a sudden increasingly can’t get insurance.

So, Chris, what’s the actual implication? I mean, what happens when people in a state can’t get insurance for their homes?

Getting insurance for a home is crucial if you want to sell or buy a home. Most people can’t buy a home without a mortgage. And banks won’t issue a mortgage without home insurance. So if you’ve got a home that insurance company doesn’t want to cover, you got a real problem. You need to find insurance, or that home becomes very close to unsellable.

And as you get fewer buyers, the price goes down. So this doesn’t just hurt people who are paying for these insurance premiums. It hurts people who want to sell their homes. It even could hurt, at some point, whole local economies. If home values fall, governments take in less tax revenue. That means less money for schools and police. It also means people who get hit by disasters and have to rebuild their homes all of a sudden can’t, because their insurance isn’t available anymore. It’s hard to overstate just how big a deal this is.

And is that actually happening, Chris? I mean, are housing markets being dragged down because of this problem with the insurance markets right now?

Anecdotally, we’ve got reports that in places like Florida and Louisiana and maybe in parts of California, the difficulty of getting insurance, the crazy high cost of insurance is starting to depress demand because not everyone can afford to pay these really high costs, even if they have insurance. But what we wanted to focus on with this story was also, OK, we know where this goes eventually. But where is it beginning? What are the places that are just starting to feel these shocks from the insurance market?

And so I called around and asked insurance agents, who are the front lines of this. They’re the ones who are struggling to find insurance for homeowners. And I said, hey, is there one place that I should go if I want to understand what it looks like to homeowners when all of a sudden insurance becomes really expensive or you can’t even find it? And those insurance agents told me, if you want to see what this looks like in real life, go to a little town called Marshalltown in the middle of Iowa.

We’ll be right back.

So, Chris, you went to Marshalltown, Iowa. What did you find?

Even before I got to Marshalltown, I had some idea I was in the right spot. When I landed in Des Moines and went to rent a car, the nice woman at the desk who rented me a car, she said, what are you doing here? I said, I’m here to write a story about people in Iowa who can’t get insurance because of storms. She said, oh, yeah, I know all about that. That’s a big problem here.

Even the rental car lady.

Even the rental car lady knew something was going on. And so I got into my rental car and drove about an hour northeast of Des Moines, through some rolling hills, to this lovely little town of Marshalltown. Marshalltown is a really cute, little Midwestern town with old homes and a beautiful courthouse in the town square. And when I drove through, I couldn’t help noticing all the roofs looked new.

What does that tell you?

Turns out Marshalltown, despite being a pastoral image of Midwestern easy living, was hit by two really bad disasters in recent years — first, a devastating tornado in 2018 and then, in 2020, what’s called a derecho, a straight-line wind event that’s also just enormously damaging. And the result was lots of homes in this small town got severely damaged in a short period of time. And so when you drive down, you see all these new roofs that give you the sense that something’s going on.

So climate had come to Marshalltown?

Exactly. A place that had previously seemed maybe safe from climate change, if there is such a thing, all of a sudden was not. So I found an insurance agent in Marshalltown —

We talked to other agents but haven’t talked to many homeowners.

— named Bobby Shomo. And he invited me to his office early one morning and said, come meet some people. And so I parked on a quiet street outside of his office, across the street from the courthouse, which also had a new roof, and went into his conference room and met a procession of clients who all had versions of the same horror story.

It was more — well more of double.

A huge reduction in coverage with a huge price increase.

Some people had faced big premium hikes.

I’m just a little, small business owner. So every little bit I do feel.

They had so much trouble with their insurance company.

I was with IMT Insurance forever. And then when I moved in 2020, Bobby said they won’t insure a pool.

Some people had gotten dropped.

Where we used to see carriers canceling someone for frequency of three or four or five claims, it’s one or two now.

Some people couldn’t get the coverage they needed. But it was versions of the same tale, which is all of a sudden, having homeowner’s insurance in Marshalltown was really difficult. But I wanted to see if it was bigger than just Marshalltown. So the next day, I got back in my car and drove east to Cedar Rapids, where I met another person having a version of the same problem, a guy named Dave Langston.

Tell me about Dave.

Dave lives in a handsome, modest, little townhouse on a quiet cul-de-sac on a hill at the edge of Cedar Rapids. He’s the president of his homeowners association. There’s 17 homes on this little street. And this is just as far as you could get from a danger zone. It looks as safe as could be. But in January, they got a letter from the company that insures him and his neighbors, saying his policy was being canceled, even though it wasn’t as though they’d just been hit by some giant storm.

So then what was the reason they gave?

They didn’t give a reason. And I think people might not realize, insurers don’t have to give a reason. Insurance policies are year to year. And if your insurance company decides that you’re too much of a risk or your neighborhood is too much of a risk or your state is too much of a risk, they can just leave. They can send you a letter saying, forget it. We’re canceling your insurance. There’s almost no protection people have.

And in this case, the reason was that this insurance company was losing too much money in Iowa and didn’t want to keep on writing homeowner’s insurance in the state. That was the situation that Dave shared with tens of thousands of people across the state that were all getting similar letters.

What made Dave’s situation a little more challenging was that he couldn’t get new insurance. He tried for months through agent after agent after agent. And every company told him the same thing. We won’t cover you. Even though these homes are perfectly safe in a safe part of the state, nobody would say yes. And it took them until basically two days before their insurance policy was going to run out until they finally found new coverage that was far more expensive and far more bare-bones than what they’d had.

But at least it was something.

It was something. But the problem was it wasn’t that good. Under this new policy, if Dave’s street got hit by another big windstorm, the damage from that storm and fixing that damage would wipe out all the savings set aside by these homeowners. The deductible would be crushingly high — $120,000 — to replace those roofs if the worst happened because the insurance money just wouldn’t cover anywhere close to the cost of rebuilding.

He said to me, we didn’t do anything wrong. This is just what insurance looks like today. And today, it’s us in Cedar Rapids. Everyone, though, is going to face a situation like this eventually. And Dave is right. I talked to insurance agents around the country. And they confirmed for me that this kind of a shift towards a new type of insurance, insurance that’s more expensive and doesn’t cover as much and makes it harder to rebuild after a big disaster, it’s becoming more and more common around the country.

So, Chris, if Dave and the people you spoke to in Iowa were really evidence that your hunch was right, that the problem is spreading and rapidly, what are the possible fixes here?

The fix that people seem most hopeful about is this idea that, what if you could reduce the risk and cause there to be less damage in the first place? So what some states are doing is they’re trying to encourage homeowners to spend more money on hardening their home or adding a new roof or, if it’s a wildfire zone, cut back the vegetation, things that can reduce your risk of having really serious losses. And to help pay for that, they’re telling insurers, you’ve got to offer a discount to people who do that.

And everyone who works in this field says, in theory, that’s the right approach. The problem is, number one, hardening a home costs a fantastic amount of money. So doing this at scale is hugely expensive. Number two, it takes a long time to actually get enough homes hardened in this way that you can make a real dent for insurance companies. We’re talking about years or probably decades before that has a real effect, if it ever works.

OK. So that sounds not particularly realistic, given the urgency and the timeline we’re on here. So what else are people looking at?

Option number two is the government gets involved. And instead of most Americans buying home insurance from a private company, they start buying it from government programs that are designed to make sure that people, even in risky places, can still buy insurance. That would be just a gargantuan undertaking. The idea of the government providing homeowner’s insurance because private companies can’t or won’t would lead to one of the biggest government programs that exists, if we could even do it.

So huge change, like the federal government actually trying to write these markets by itself by providing homeowner’s insurance. But is that really feasible?

Well, in some areas, we’re actually already doing it. The government already provides flood insurance because for decades, most private insurers have not wanted to cover flood. It’s too risky. It’s too expensive. But that change, with governments taking over that role, creates a new problem of its own because the government providing flood insurance that you otherwise couldn’t get means people have been building and building in flood-prone areas because they know they can get that guaranteed flood insurance.

Interesting. So that’s a huge new downside. The government would be incentivizing people to move to places that they shouldn’t be.

That’s right. But there’s even one more problem with that approach of using the government to try to solve this problem, which is these costs keep growing. The number of billion-dollar disasters the US experiences every year keeps going up. And at some point, even if the government pays the cost through some sort of subsidized insurance, what happens when that cost is so great that we can no longer afford to pay it? That’s the really hard question that no official can answer.

So that’s pretty doomsday, Chris. Are we looking at the end of insurance?

I think it’s fair to say that we’re looking at the end of insurance as we know it, the end of insurance that means most Americans can rest assured that if they get hit by a disaster, their insurance company will provide enough money they can rebuild. That idea might be going away. And what it shows is maybe the threat of climate change isn’t quite what we thought.

Maybe instead of climate change wrecking communities in the form of a big storm or a wildfire or a flood, maybe even before those things happen, climate change can wreck communities by something as seemingly mundane and even boring as insurance. Maybe the harbinger of doom is not a giant storm but an anodyne letter from your insurance company, saying, we’re sorry to inform you we can no longer cover your home.

Maybe the future of climate change is best seen not by poring over weather data from NOAA but by poring over spreadsheets from rating firms, showing the profitability from insurance companies, and how bit by bit, that money that they’re losing around the country tells its own story. And the story is these shocks are actually already here.

Chris, as always, terrifying to talk to you.

Always a pleasure, Sabrina.

Here’s what else you should know today. On Tuesday, the United Nations has reclassified the number of women and children killed in Gaza, saying that it does not have enough identifying information to know exactly how many of the total dead are women and children. The UN now estimates that about 5,000 women and about 8,000 children have been killed, figures that are about half of what it was previously citing. The UN says the numbers dropped because it is using a more conservative estimate while waiting for information on about 10,000 other dead Gazans who have not yet been identified.

And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, gave a press conference outside the court in Lower Manhattan, where Michael Cohen, the former fixer for Donald Trump, was testifying for a second day, answering questions from Trump’s lawyers. Trump is bound by a gag order. So Johnson joined other stand-ins for the former president to discredit the proceedings. Johnson, one of the most important Republicans in the country, attacked Cohen but also the trial itself, calling it a sham and political theater.

Today’s episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Shannon Lin, and Jessica Cheung. It was edited by MJ Davis Lin, with help from Michael Benoist, contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Rowan Niemisto, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

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• May 17, 2024   •   51:10 The Campus Protesters Explain Themselves
• May 16, 2024   •   30:47 The Make-or-Break Testimony of Michael Cohen
• May 15, 2024   •   27:03 The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System
• May 14, 2024   •   35:20 Voters Want Change. In Our Poll, They See It in Trump.
• May 13, 2024   •   27:46 How Biden Adopted Trump’s Trade War With China
• May 10, 2024   •   27:42 Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand
• May 9, 2024   •   34:42 One Strongman, One Billion Voters, and the Future of India
• May 8, 2024   •   28:28 A Plan to Remake the Middle East
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Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Christopher Flavelle

Produced by Nina Feldman ,  Shannon M. Lin and Jessica Cheung

Edited by MJ Davis Lin

With Michael Benoist

Original music by Dan Powell ,  Marion Lozano and Rowan Niemisto

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Across the United States, more frequent extreme weather is starting to cause the home insurance market to buckle, even for those who have paid their premiums dutifully year after year.

Christopher Flavelle, a climate reporter, discusses a Times investigation into one of the most consequential effects of the changes.

On today’s episode

Christopher Flavelle , a climate change reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading

As American insurers bleed cash from climate shocks , homeowners lose.

See how the home insurance crunch affects the market in each state .

Here are four takeaways from The Times’s investigation.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter who writes about how the United States is trying to adapt to the effects of climate change. More about Christopher Flavelle

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