Category Archives: Rational Death

Religion And Funerals

Rational Death,

We know there are relationships between religion and funeral practices in America. For a long time, almost all funeral ceremonies were primarily religious, and today that still probably describes the vast majority.

When religion changes, therefore, we might expect some effect on funerals and burials. The effect isn’t easy to predict or quantify, though. Funeral changes, in turn, might arise from various causes apart from religion.

Theologian John Heywood Thomas notes that funerals touch on the meaning of life, but are also practical processes that, over time, have become neat and efficient, wherein the goal is to provide a “nice” service:

All too often death is for many both comfortless and without fear, a non-event. Besides the psychological effects of such an ignoring of death there is the more important ethical consequence that we neither properly value the life that has ended nor apply ourselves to that—perhaps secondary but still urgent—task of bringing our hearts to wisdom.1

The minister and professor Thomas Long suggests that as our religion has become less serious, our funeral practices have followed suit:

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Questions About What We Need From Funerals

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What do we need from funerals?

Some people say the answer lies in rituals having certain psychological effects. Others say it’s about doing what humans have done in the past. Some point to religion, or community bonding, or ecology.

It all gets very involved. In order to help potential funeral buyers get a handle on what they might need, I plan in future posts to discuss ways different parties have answered the question, and domains of knowledge supporting or contradicting their opinions.

Without delving into controversies, let’s just list the related questions that arise when we ask the main question above.

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Funeral Price Increases Since 1986

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Since at least the fourth century BC when Herodotus, the Greek philosopher, reportedly criticized lavish funeral practices1, a common complaint about the funeral business has been that the cost of dying is too high. We’ll look at funeral price ranges in detail in a later post, but for now I’ll note the price of a funeral can easily surpass $10,000, depending on where you live, and cremation might be had for as little as $1,000, also depending on where you live.

In his 1921 study of funeral costs, Quincy Dowd recommended cremation “because enlightened choice sees therein a beautiful and economical, not to say Christian, practice.”2 Forty-two years later, Ruth Harmer said the rate of increasing funeral prices was so steep that regardless of how frugally they lived, most people were “dying beyond their means.”3

And we won’t even mention She Who Shall Not Be Named.

Whether something is “too expensive” is not an easy question to answer without context. Providing that context is one of the main rationales of Rational Death.

In comparison to other things we buy, prices of caskets and overall funeral expenses have increased more quickly. That is the conclusion of a recent report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) titled “The rising cost of dying, 1986–2017.”

As shown in the following graph “the price of funerals in the United States has risen almost twice as fast as consumer prices for all items. From December 1986 to September 2017, funeral expenses rose 227.1 percent, while prices for all items rose 123.4 percent.”4

Change in consumer prices, 1986-2017

Below is a summary of the BLS data covering 1986-2017.

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The Baby Boom Generation

Rational Death,

The next piece in our data puzzle is the reason for the projected future death totals in America. Here we learn that the secret to predicting deaths, is births.

To cut right to the chase, this chart from the U.S. Census Bureau “Current Population Reports”1 tells the story:

Data tables and several additional charts will give a fuller picture, but this one graphic shows why funeral-related businesses are likely entering a tumultuous period, why people who invested in “death care” stocks in the 1990s later asked themselves “what was I thinking?” and why our funeral practices may change in important ways.

Someone looking at business sectors to dabble in during the next 30 years may well wonder if the Census people were sending a message by making the bars on the right side green.

As we will see in future posts, cashing in on death-related services is not as solid a proposition as, say, elder care or other types of services for seniors; nevertheless, implications for the funeral business are guaranteed.

Here is the birth data2 that delivered us to our downward sloping future:

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