Why undertakers are worried
Apr 17, 2018Most of these deaths bring not just grief to some, but also profit to others. America’s 2.7m-odd deaths a year underpin an industry worth $16bn in 2017, encompassing over 19,000 funeral homes and over 120,000 employees. In France the sector is worth an estimated €2.5bn ($3.1bn). The German market was worth €1.5bn in 2014 and employed nearly 27,000 people, a sixth of them undertakers. In Britain the industry, estimated to be worth around £2bn ($2.8bn), employs over 20,000 people, a fifth of them undertakers.In the coming decades, as baby-boomers hit old age, the annual death rate will climb from 8.3 per 1,000 people today to 10.2 by 2050 in America, from 10.6 to 13.7 in Italy and from 9.1 to 12.8 in Spain. Spotting the steady rise in clientele, money managers—from risk-seeking venture capitalists to boring old pension funds—have been getting into the death business. Last year the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund bought one of Spain’s largest funeral businesses from 3i Group, a British private-equity firm, for £117m, and increased its stake in a French equivalent. The dead-body business is seen as highly predictable, uncorrelated with other industries, inflation-linked, low-risk and high-margin.Get our daily newsletterUpgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.But in some of the world a profound shift is under way in what people want from funerals. As Thomas Lynch wrote in “The Undertaking” (1997), a wise book on practising his “dismal trade” in a small American town: “Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople. Another two or three dozen I take to the crematory to be burned. I sell caskets, burial vaults and urns for the ashes. I have a sideline in headstones and monuments. I do flowers on commission.” Social, religious and technological change threaten to turn that model on its head.In North America the modern undertaker’s job is increasingly one of event-planning, says Sherri Tovell, an undertaker in Windsor, Canada. Among the requirements at her recent funerals have been a tiki hut, margaritas, k... (Making the reaper cheaper - The Economist)
