(Roughly) Daily

The cost of burying a loved one in America has risen faster than virtually everything else over the last 30 years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics just published a fascinating look at the cost of dying in the US…  The chart below shows that the price index for funerals has risen almost twice as fast as consumer prices for all other items.

Producer prices for caskets rose 230% from December 1986 through September 2017, while prices for all commodities increased 95.1%. The data is not seasonally adjusted.

As casket costs surged, the rate of cremations surpassed burials in 2015 for a second straight year, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. Its data showed that the median cost of a funeral with viewing and burial in 2014 was $7,181, and $6078 for a funeral with viewing and cremation.

Dig in at: “It’s gotten a whole lot more expensive to die in America.”

See also: “The 10 Companies That Control the Death Industry.”

* Mark Twain

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As we memento mori, we might spare a thought for Sir Samuel Wilks; he died on this date in 1911.  Wilks, who served as President of the Royal College of Physicians in the UK., made his mark with the publication on his Lectures on Pathological Anatomy (1863)– for which he is remembered as a founding father of clinical science and modern pathology.  He identified the visceral lesions of syphilis and improved the understanding of Addison’s, Bright’s and Hodgkin’s diseases.  As Sir Thomas Barlow observed, “ [Wilks] started the systematic and practical teaching of morbid anatomy, and for nearly thirty years Wilks represented and embodied at Guy’s Hospital the important combination of a great morbid anatomist, and a great clinical physician and teacher.”

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