These charges must be considerable one in ten of all the dead is shipped elsewhere for burial. Some counties contract with funeral directors for casket, service, and burial for as little as $70 some pay as much as $300 for casket and service alone.Īnother substantial item of funeral expense which is not included in the Department of Commerce figure is the cost of shipping the dead by train or plane. There is a wildly disparate variation in costs and procedures. The burial of indigents, for example, is a matter of city or county concern. How much do these public expenditures amount to annually? Nobody knows, for there is no centrally maintained source of information. Department of Commerce census of business under the heading "personal expenditure for death expense." Since it includes personal expenditures only, it does not include burial expenditures by cities and counties and by private and public institutions for the burial of indigents, welfare recipients, and persons confined in public institutions, nor does it include burial expenditures by the armed forces for military personnel. ![]() The $1.6 billion figure that is given for our national burial bill is furnished by the U.S. ![]() This is a record unmatched in any previous age or civilization. The $1.6 billion is, as we shall see, only a portion of what was actually spent on what the death industry calls "the care and memorialization of the dead." Even this partial figure, if averaged out among the number of deaths, would amount to the astonishing sum of $942 for the funeral of every man, woman, child, and stillborn babe who died in the United States in 1960. In 1960, Americans spent, according to the only available government estimate, $1.6 billion on funerals, setting thereby a new national and world record.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |