Economic Policy Brief #91 | Inijah Quadri | December 26, 2025
Policy Issue Summary
Death in the United States has evolved from a community-centered rite into a sprawling, multi-billion-dollar commercial sector often dubbed the funeral industrial complex. With approximately three million Americans dying annually, a figure projected to rise as the baby boomer generation ages, the logistics of disposition have become a pressing socioeconomic challenge. For decades, the default American way of death involved embalming, heavy metal caskets, and concrete vaults, a practice that is historically an anomaly and environmentally taxing. However, economic pressures and shifting cultural attitudes have catalyzed a massive transition toward cremation. In 2024, the cremation rate surpassed 61 percent, with projections suggesting it will exceed 80 percent by 2045.
This shift is not merely a matter of preference but of necessity for many. The costs associated with traditional burial have skyrocketed, often leaving families with bills exceeding $10,000 for a single service. Consequently, “funeral poverty” has emerged as a silent crisis, with recent surveys indicating that one in three Americans now borrows money to cover end-of-life expenses. Simultaneously, the physical landscape of death is fracturing. The United States contains close to 100,000 active and inactive cemeteries, a number that fluctuates as older, often family or church-run graveyards are abandoned due to lack of funds or changing demographics. Who bears the responsibility for these spaces—particularly those historically segregated and neglected—remains a murky legal and ethical question, often leaving the history of marginalized communities to be erased by nature or development.
Analysis
The modern American approach to death is defined as a tension between the sacredness of grief and the cold logic of the market. The industry has seen significant consolidation, with large corporations and private equity firms acquiring independent funeral homes, often retaining the original family name to maintain a façade of local ownership while raising prices. This commodification exploits the emotional vulnerability of grieving families, who are less likely to price-shop or negotiate. The result is a system where dignity is effectively means-tested. For the wealthy, perpetual care and elaborate monuments are guaranteed; for the poor, the options are increasingly limited to direct cremation or reliance on crowdfunding.
Environmentally, the standard American funeral is an excess of resource consumption. Each year, traditional burials inter millions of feet of hardwood, tons of steel and concrete, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of embalming fluid—a known carcinogen—into the earth. While cremation is often touted as the greener alternative, it too has a significant carbon footprint, requiring high energy usage and releasing mercury and other particulates into the atmosphere. This ecological reality has spurred a small but growing “green burial” movement, which advocates for returning the body to the earth in a biodegradable shroud or container, without chemical preservation or concrete liners. This method aligns closely with many traditional Jewish and Muslim practices, which have long prioritized swift, simple burial in plain wood or cloth, unintentionally offering a model for both ecological sustainability and economic restraint.
The crisis of cemetery maintenance further reveals the systemic inequalities embedded in our death care infrastructure. While “perpetual care” funds are legally required for many modern commercial cemeteries, thousands of older, inactive graveyards fall through regulatory cracks. This neglect is disproportionately visible in African American cemeteries, which have historically been denied the public support and tax dollars afforded to white or Confederate cemeteries. The erasure of these sites is not just a failure of landscaping but a deletion of history—one that recent legislative efforts, such as the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act, seek to address by supporting documentation and preservation. Grassroots efforts are emerging to reclaim these spaces, viewing them not just as repositories of the dead but as vital archives of community and lineage that the state has failed to protect.
Ultimately, the privatization of death care has created a landscape where the final act of a human life is dictated by profit margins and zip codes. Addressing these issues requires a multifaceted approach: stricter antitrust regulation to curb corporate price-gouging, increased transparency in pricing, and public investment in the restoration of abandoned cemeteries as cultural heritage sites. It also demands a cultural shift towards “death positivity,” encouraging open conversations about end-of-life wishes and the reclaiming of funeral rites by families and communities, rather than outsourcing them entirely to commercial entities.
Engagement Resources
- Funeral Consumers Alliance (https://funerals.org/): A nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting a consumer’s right to choose a meaningful, dignified, and affordable funeral. They offer monitoring of legal trends and provide resources to help families avoid funeral poverty.
- Green Burial Council (https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/): The standard-setting organization for green burial in North America, offering certification for funeral homes, cemeteries, and products that meet rigorous environmental and ethical standards.
- Black Cemetery Network (https://blackcemeterynetwork.org/): A national network connecting researchers, descendants, and volunteers working to preserve and reclaim historic Black cemeteries, ensuring these sacred sites and their stories are not lost to erasure.
- The Order of the Good Death (https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/): A death acceptance organization that advocates for funeral industry reform and promotes open, honest conversations about mortality, including the “death positive” movement.
- National Home Funeral Alliance (https://www.homefuneralalliance.org/): An organization that educates and empowers families to care for their own dead, promoting home funerals as a legal, safe, and culturally restorative alternative to the commercial funeral industry.