In the United States today, most funerals are arranged by licensed funeral directors, most bodies are prepared for disposition by licensed embalmers, and many funerals take place in licensed funeral homes. The funeral industry has been handling the dead in America for only a century. This is largely an industry made up of “mom and pop” family owned businesses, passed down from generation to generation, although there are a few large companies and even a few that are publicly traded.
I thought that an interview Dan Isard, the president of The Foresight Companies and an expert on the funeral industry, would be a great way to begin to lay a foundation on Death, et seq. We can’t understand how the world of death care may be changing until we understand how that world functions in the first place. In today’s episode, Dan and I discuss the structure of the funeral industry and some of the challenges that it faces.
Dan Isard has been providing management and financial consulting services to the funeral industry for 25 years. He is a frequent speaker on topics related to the funeral industry and writes a column for The Director magazine.
Takeaways:
⇒ Isard’s research shows that there are between 19,000 and 20,000 funeral homes, down about 10% from a decade ago. About 15,000 funeral homes are owned by approximately 9,000 to 10,000 privately owned “Mom and Pop” businesses.
⇒ About 60% of bodies are embalmed.
⇒ Number of locations is declining, total deaths is increasing, our population continues to increase and our death rate is increasing. I asked Isard: “That should suggest boom times for the funeral industry, right?”
⇒ Recent trends cited by Isard: Dramatic increase in cremation disposition and large increase in pre-arrangement, but the profitability of those pre-arrangements is decreasing.
⇒ Isard argues that in order to save the funeral services industry, we have to “blow up” the licensure regime.
⇒ The pricing of cremation also needs to be “blown up” because “burial is subsidizing cremation.”
For more extensive show notes or to submit questions, please visit the website, www.deathetseq.com.
Estate planning should involve more than simply creating the appropriate documents to address who will receive your property after your death. Modern estate planning also includes some planning for a period of time prior to death, particularly if circumstances arise that a person cannot manage their own property or cannot make health care decisions for themselves. The vast majority of people will die after a period of some incapacity. If that period is short, then there are few problems. But because that period can be months or even years, many people want to make arrangements with respect to their property and health care in case the need arises.
There are three basic documents for planning for the period of incapacity that Jonah Bamel, Greg Volk and Tanya Marsh discuss in this episode: (1) a health care proxy or health care power of attorney; (2) living will or advance directive; and (3) durable power of attorney.
Visit www.deathetseq.com for links to additional resources.
On this week’s episode, I am happy to share with you a conversation that I recently had with Barbara Kemmis, the Executive Director of the Cremation Association of North America, or CANA. Cremation is on the rise in the United States. As Barbara will explain, after it was legalized in a handful of states in the 1870s, it took about a century for the cremation rate to hit 5% in this country. For the past several years, cremation has been a more popular option in the United States than burial, which represents a seismic shift in American disposition practices. Barbara and I will discuss the rising cremation rate, some of the reasons that people have been embracing cremation, and research conducted by CANA regarding correlations between demographic information and the cremation rate. I also ask Barbara about the environmental impacts of cremation and she shares some of the research that CANA has done in that area as well.
To learn more:
Industry Statistics: https://www.cremationassociation.org/page/IndustryStatistics
Roaming/Rooted Blogpost Link: https://www.cremationassociation.org/blogpost/776820/280926/Enhanced-Statistics-Enhance-Your-Business-Success
Link to all posts about stats: https://www.cremationassociation.org/blogpost/776820/The-Cremation-Logs?tag=statistics
The Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century changed countless aspects of everyday life for every kind of person across Europe. One of the things most profoundly affected was the popular conception of death. On this episode, I will be speaking with third year Wake Forest University Law School student Jordan Artrip about how the theology of the Reformation caused a paradigm shift for how death and the dead were viewed by society, as well as the practical effects of that shift on life and religious practice.
Topics addressed in episode:
About a month ago, I sat down with my friend Tim Mossberger in Champaign, Illinois to talk about our mutual favorite band, The Avett Brothers, and a bunch of their songs that deal with topics related to mortality.
Tim has a website called As My Life Turns to a Song – The Avett Brothers Archive. He has been methodically collecting and documenting the history of the band, and together with Paul Oehler has created an Avett setlist database that is as comprehensive as possible. And with me, Tim has created Tales of Avett News, a blog where we publish concert reviews, interviews with Avett fans and people connected with the band, and other content of interest to Avett fans.
In this episode, Tim and I discuss a number of Avett Brothers songs that deal with various aspects of mortality including:
The Fall
Talk on Indolence
The Lowering
Die Die Die
Another Youngster
Am I Born to Die (cover)
Live and Die
Life
Through My Prayers
Once and Future Carpenter
Morning Song
Murder in the City
No Hard Feelings
Death is celebrated all over the world on annual basis. More than 175 million Americans will celebrate Halloween this year, with total spending in 2018 reaching $9 billion, with the average consumer planning to spend $86.79 on decorations, candy, costumes and more. While celebrated on a mass scale, most Americans likely do not know the history behind Halloween and how it has turned into a billion-dollar industry.
Another major death related holiday that is often associated with Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, is actually its own unique holiday, where families spend even more than the average American consumer, as anywhere from two weeks to two months wages are spent on average honoring the dead.
Today's podcast will discuss the history and current trends of Halloween and Dias de los Muertos, as well as take a deeper look into some other interesting death related holidays from around the world that our listeners may be less familiar with.
This hybrid episode combines Cemetery Tourism in Philadelphia and the music of recording artist Dan Zlotnick. In Part I, I discuss the history and some of the notable burials in Spruce Street Cemetery, the Old Pine Street Church churchyard, Christ Church churchyard and burial ground, the potter’s field in Washington Square, and Laurel Hill Cemetery. In Part II, singer-songwriter Dan Zlotnick shares two original songs, “Day 2 for Dina,” and “The Man Who Died Here Saved Me,” as well as his covers of The Avett Brothers’ “The Greatest Sum” and the folk song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.”
Check out Dan's music at https://www.danzlotnick.com/.
This is Tanya Marsh and you’re listening to Death, et seq. My guest this week is Sarah Crews, the director of Heart Land Prairie Cemetery in Salina, Kansas, the first all natural burial ground in Kansas, and the President of the National Home Funeral Alliance. Sarah also has a background in hospice and music.
Links:
National Home Funeral Alliance
Heart Land Prairie Cemetery
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