Rising costs, declining demand, massive consolidation and government scrutiny: the death industry is changing, maybe for good (2024)

The biggest growth business, cremation, relies on vast quantities of fossil fuels and volatile costs.

At the same time, the Federal Trade Commission has the industry sweating over price transparency.

Worried about the high cost of living? Wait until you hear about dying.

The old model, dead and buried

The year 2015 marked a special milestone in the funeral industry, according to the National Funeral Director's Association. After decades of growth, it marked the first time the national cremation rate overtook the casket-burial rate. The group doesn't expect that growth to slow down anytime soon.

Jack Mitchell, the president of the NFDA, explained to Insider there several reasons why the demand for cremation's been on the rise.

A key reason, he explained, is the decline in religious participation across the US.

"Traditionally when someone lost a loved one, they would have a viewing and then they would be taken to their church for a funeral service and then onto the cemetery for a burial," Mitchell said. "But more and more people don't go to church, so a religious aspect to however they memorialize their loved one is not important to them. So that brings up then, 'Do we need to have mom in a casket? We're not gonna be taking her to church. Is cremation a possibility?'"

As a recent report from the Public Religion Research Institute found, only 43% of Americans reported attending religious services "at least a few times a year," down from 56% in 2013.

Another main factor, Mitchell explained, is that the average cremation is simply much cheaper than a traditional burial. As the 2022 NFDA Cremation & Burial Report explained, "Typically, cremations cost 40% less than funerals with burials."

Additionally, as the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed in a September 2022 report, funeral homes are increasingly being purchased by funeral home chains and private equity-backed firms — around one-in-five funeral homes are currently a part of a chain — leading to concerns from consumer advocates that prices for funeral-related services could continue to be pushed up as private equity-backed firms have historically done in the past.

The demand for the cheaper post-death option comes at a time when the poverty rate for elderly Americans appears to be on the rise. The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that 10.7% of the elderly population in the US lives in poverty, compared to 9.5% in 2020.

There are more options out there than simply burying or cremating a body

While cremations are notoriously cheaper than burials, they do come with a caveat: each cremation can release more than 500 pounds of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

Sara Williams, the president of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, told Insider she thinks that some funeral homes are beginning to realize the environmental impact of fire cremation, leading them to offer newer-age alternatives to cremation and burials, like "aquamation," where a body is dissolved in a vessel, leaving behind just bone, which is then ground up.

As of 2022, the aquamation process, also known as alkaline hydrolysis, is legal in 24 states and legislation to legalize it is circulating in several other states.

Mitchell, the president of the National Funeral Directors Association, said there's an "ick factor" that pushes some prospective consumers away from the aquamation process due to the nature of it along with the idea that the bodily remains are ultimately sent to public water treatment facilities.

"You have what was skin, and organs, and blood vessels that has now decomposed down into this alkaline fluid and that goes away to wastewater treatment," he said.

But according to Hunter Beattie, the owner and operator of a funeral home in North Carolina specializing in aquamation services, Endswell, that "ick factor" appears alongside many funeral services "once you lift the veil."

"This is an industry that has really put a lot into that veil, into the makeup, into the super gluing of eyes, wiring a jaw shut, making someone look like they're not really dead," Beattie said. "I think that I'm forced to have those conversations because aquamation is new and different, but when you start to dig a little deeper, the 'ick factor' is there no matter what you're doing because you're dealing with a dead body."

Separate from aquamation, some consumers are choosing a process that's potentially even more environmentally friendly: natural organic reduction, or human composting.

Katrina Spade is the founder and CEO of Recompose, a Washington-state-based funeral home that's offered and pioneered the service since Washington legalized the practice in 2020.

To compost the bodies, Recompose places each body into a specific vessel along with plant materials like woodchips and straw and is left to decompose for 30 days and turn into soil. After the 30 days have passed, a Recompose worker removes any nonorganic materials (like a titanium hip replacement) and mechanically crushes the remaining bones before placing the new soil into a "curing bin" for a few weeks to finish composting.

The process ultimately results in a cubic yard of fresh soil which is sent (all or just some) to the decedent's family or is sent to be used in conservation projects.

The FTC is considering a massive change that could benefit consumers

Endswell, the funeral home Beattie operates in North Carolina, is transparent about its aquamation pricing on its website: $2,500 (the price includes the entire cost of the aquamation process, the cost of obtaining a death certificate, transporting the body, and giving back the remains in an urn).

Recompose is no different — the Washington-based human composting organization is also up front about the total cost on its website: $7,000.

But while these two innovative funeral homes offer their price lists on their websites, they are not required to.

That could change, however, in the coming years as the Federal Trade Commission looks to potentially update its "Funeral Rule," which was enacted in 1984 and requires funeral homes to tell prospective customers their prices over the phone or with a physical price list if visiting in person, among other things.

The FTC is currently weighing whether or not funeral homes should be required to post the price of their services online.

The National Funeral Directors Association is not fully on board.

"We're not opposed to funeral homes putting their general price lists on their websites," said Mitchell, the president of the NFDA, "but we are opposed to the government telling us that we have to. We do feel like it should be the choice of every funeral home, whether or not they choose to."

He said that most consumers "don't even call more than one funeral home" when they're in need of one's services, suggesting that updating the Funeral Rule would only benefit a small subset of consumers.

The potential rule change is also being monitored by the Funeral Consumers Alliance, which has been pushing for the change for decades.

Williams, the group's national president, said it "boggles the mind" how a consumer can currently go online and compare prices for a refrigerator or a car, but not a burial. If the Funeral Rule gets updated, she said it would also help lighten the load of her organization.

Local chapters of the FCA independently administer price surveys to each of the funeral homes in their states, creating comprehensive databases for consumers to peruse when shopping around at funeral homes.

"Our chapters across the country, our affiliates are out there busting their butts every year or every two years calling, visiting, emailing funeral homes to get the price list so that we can post them for consumers who are shocked at how difficult it is to get this information," Williams said.