Death beyond the means: Funeral overspending and its government regulation around the world

Abstract

While death-related household overspending is increasingly an international phenomenon with far-reaching implications, the government responses to it vary greatly throughout the world. This article offers a model of death-related overspending, including both population and governments. The analysis of data from 118 countries empirically supports the main research argument—the decline of traditional hierarchies and simultaneous ascendance of newly-affluent urbanite class, to the backdrop of collectivist society pervaded by superstitions, increase household incentives to spend on death beyond their means. State policy response depends on both the government’s ability to control vested interests and the financial cost of an average funeral.

Keywords

Ancestor worship death-related overspending government regulation of funerals social value shift superstition

Introduction

In many societies, funerals serve as an arena to compete for social capital and prestige through emulative spending (Sadigov, 2020a; Veblen, 2010). Mass media and specialists point to the threat of household overspending on funerals in various regions (Chi, 2017; IWPR, 2017; McManus, 2015; The Economist, 2018). Especially in developing countries, the lack of funeral regulation may create social distortions, by leading to household indebtedness (West, 2015), epidemics, social tensions (Qin, 2013; Ucanews, 2007), and the difficulty of assessing insurance demand (CARE, 2011). For instance, lavish funerals of monks in Burma, and of the bureaucrats in Tajikistan and China, lead to an equally pronounced population resentment (Naing and Pellot, 2015), undermining social stability. Uncontrolled large funerals with a significant number of people practicing non-hygienic interaction and food consumption may trigger epidemics. Funerals exacerbated cholera epidemic in Guinea-Bissau (Ferrie, 2008), Ebola in Liberia (Poon and Klibanoff, 2014), and HIV in Tanzania (Marsland, 2015).

Consequently, 14 states in Europe, Central and East Asia, and Africa have either introduced or debated legislation restricting funeral spending. However, since funerals are universal, and many societies share the same funeral norms and practices, we can assume that the geography of household death overspending—a situation when a household, faced with a death of its member, spends on death-related rituals more than it can afford given its financial situation—spans many more states which have not introduced so far any funeral regulations. Hence the prime objective of the article is to offer a cross-country comparative investigation of the state of the household death costs, and identify the countries where households on average face funeral overspending. The paper’s second objective is to review the existing state responses to the household death overspending. A puzzle that drives this research is that the states with similar household burden of death costs often display varying state reactions to it.

This research is interested in two questions. First, in which countries do households experience death-related spending beyond their financial means? Second, what socio-political and economic factors account for the difference in state reaction to the household death-related overspending? For instance, some parliaments attempt to regulate death costs by debating relevant regulation. However, in many cases the draft regulation of funerals has not passed parliamentary hearings or the passing of legislation has been delayed. Hence, it is also important to establish the factors that account for the different levels of legislative success in the regulation of funerals among various states.

Despite the scale of the problem, existing research has not directly addressed both its comparative breadth in cross-country large-N study, or the differences in various governments’ responses to death-related overspending. First, existing literature have not comprehensively covered the impact of relevant factors on target population’s persistence to overspend on funerals. Funeral research is either country and region-specific (Banks, 1998; Case et al., 2013), or revolves around specific aspects of funeral-related costs (Harrington and Krynski, 2002). Second, the literature does not address policy differences among the states with similar scale of the problem. For instance, studies point to the funeral overspending problem in the majority of post-Soviet Central Asian states (Borisenko, 2017; Tengrinews, 2017). However, while Tajikistan and Uzbekistan introduced and enforced strict funeral regulations, similar laws have not gone beyond parliamentary debates in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The same difference in government policies is noticeable among various states in Africa, Europe, and Asia. These research gaps incapacitate both academia’s and policymakers’ ability to account for the major factors affecting funeral overspending, as well as provide context-specific solutions to counter the problems bred by spiraling funeral costs.

Collecting and analyzing data on 118 countries, I argue that the rapid political-economic transformation and the demise of traditional authority to the backdrop of a collectivist culture with high rates of superstition¹ push households to overspend on death. Hence, countries with higher rates of political-economic instability, social environment pervaded by superstitions and collectivist pressure on individuals, and the lower cremation rates, are more likely to face inflated costs of dying. Societies with ancestor worship (China, Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa) have the greatest difficulty of curtailing costs of death by promoting cremation as a cost-cutting exit option. Government capabilities (the governments’ ability to control vested interests of funeral industry, and the governments’ capacity to reconcile clashing economic interests within private sector), better explain government interference than the variables accounting for the problem urgency (financial burden of death, land shortage, income inequality).

This article makes several contributions to the literature. To the best of my knowledge, this is a first systematic empirical large-N cross-country assessment of the financial burden of death-related expenses. Along with outlining the scale of the problem, the study assesses socio-economic and political factors of the inflation of death costs. Second, unlike existing literature, this research complements the discussion of the funeral poverty with data on government reaction to the problem. This offers a detailed picture of the interdependence between problem incidence and the intensity of a state’s policy intervention. Third, the work contributes to academic literature on the transformation of social values (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). The research results indicate that socio-economic changes like increasing welfare and security around the world do not necessarily translate into concomitant value shifts. Specifically, rising new middle classes use their newly acquired resources to earn central status position in traditionalist societies where older hierarchies of prestige have been shattered by globalization. Thus, new middle class channels its financial prowess into conspicuous funeral spending reinforcing behavior patterns of the previous generations rather than displaying a value shift. This finding does not corroborate earlier research that establishes social value change on the basis of improving economic situation around the world in recent decades (Inglehart, 1997; Welzel, 2013).

I start by discussing the literature relevant to death-cost inflation. The second section lays out theoretical model and research propositions. Research design, including variables, data, and methods follow up. The following section is devoted to the findings, and placing them into a broader analytical context. The final section concludes by discussing research implications.

Theories explaining death costs

Population choices

Academic literature identifies several major factors of cross-country variation in death-related costs. First strand of research points to the relevance of traditionalist social environment. Specifically, a major trigger for ritual overspending may be the influence of collectivism that attaches a high significance to social prestige (Brown et al., 2011; Jindra and Noret, 2011; Van Vugt and Hardy, 2010). Like other collective rites of passage, funerals have traditionally been a convenient outlet to demonstrate and compete for social capital² through conspicuous consumption. In a collectivist social setting a household is more sensitive to its standing in a hierarchy of prestige (Banfield, 1958) than in more individualist societies. This preoccupation with prestige points to the dominance of symbolic psychological orientation (Sadigov, 2018, 2021). An average household is motivated to enter in a “generosity competition” with others to symbolically raise its prestige (earned through the displays of generous ritual spending) relative to the resources at its disposal. Hence the quest to reinforce family prestige through lavish displays of generosity, funeral banquets, or spectacular family sarcophaguses and tombstones (Mukhammadrajab, 2012) leads households to overspend beyond their means.

Second, the literature has no consensus on the effect of modernization on the ritual spending. Thus, one strand of research argues that a cultural environment undergoing a significant economic transformation under the impact of modernization is more likely to experience ritual overspending. Economic modernization may lead to higher urbanization with concomitant individualization and economic emancipation of individuals from their extended families (Gellner, 1983). Individuals with lower stocks of social capital and higher incentives to break away from traditional hierarchies then have a greater chance of economic success in the new economic order. On the other hand, in a rapidly transforming economic setting, social classes sitting on top of a traditional prestige hierarchies may find it economically difficult to continue their display of generosity and conspicuous consumption³ due to shifting economic fortunes. This in turn, puts a strain on older patron-client hierarchies. Crumbling social and traditional hierarchies under the onslaught of economic modernization open social capital markets (like funerals) for status competition. In this situation, newly successful individuals are trying to develop new orders of prestige through profligate ritual spending, thus translating their financial capital into a social one (Bullock and McIntyre, 2012: 309; Yalçin-Hekmann, 2001). The phenomenon of funeral overspending was characteristic of many societies living through the deep transformations of modernization. For instance, in the Netherlands during the 17–19th centuries funeral overspending was salient (Hollewand, 2011). Therefore, societies marked by a significant socio-political instability (Huntington, 1968), and consequent change in status hierarchies, are more likely to face inflating ritual costs than more stable societies.

However, other studies argue that modernization should the decrease the probability of the ritual overspending. Specifically, rising disposable income, and living standards may significantly affect a household’s ability to either reject or accept a society’s cultural pressure to overspend on funerals (Mohd Zahari and Suhaimi, 2016; Wang, 2010). Modernization, with rising urbanization and income, is linked to the economic freedom of people from the dependence on extended families and village communities, and consequently the freedom to pursue individual tastes (Inglehart, 1997) as opposed to collective values. Hence, modernization, with rising incomes, should lower individuals’ demand for extravagant rites of passage in a bid to earn social prestige. Empirical data from Angola (Ansell, 2001; António, 2018), Turkey (Sabah, 2012), Sri Lanka (Wijeratne, 2015) among others, corroborate that higher income, and urbanized individuals are increasingly refusing large-scale rites of passage. However, modernization may have an opposite effect too. Dramatic social transformation instituted by globalization and individualization may push indigenous societies to “invent traditions” (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) by reinforcing the importance of the rites of passage in a bid to raise solidarity and social integration in a highly unstable society (Roche and Hohmann, 2011).

Third, an important contributing factor of funeral overspending is superstition—belief in the power of supernatural interference in human affairs⁴ (through evil eye, witchcraft, black magic). First, in various Asian (Inoue, 2014; Sheng, 2009), African (Alushula, 2018), and Latin American (Mendoza, 2017) countries, population does not practice funeral planning—mostly by rejecting life insurance and relevant procurements (e.g. of burial land) out of the fear of attracting death. The lack of forward planning increases the cost of dying (Gándara, 2016). Second, a superstitious belief in the power of diseased people’s ghosts to meddle into human affairs leads to elaborate funerals with no costs spared in such areas as Ghana (Arhin, 1994) and China (Ng, 2017). Third, religious beliefs that priests can soften post-mortal fate of a soul leads to significant population concessions to the demands of sorcerers in Guinea-Bissau (Maia, 2018) or dakshina donations to priests in India, thus bloating funeral costs.

Fourth, a land shortage and high death rate may inflate one of the most expensive funeral items—burial land (Ren, 2018). In densely populated countries like Moldova (Publika, 2013) and Indonesia (Budi, 2019), there are reports of burial land speculation—where the land plots reserved or occupied earlier are being re-sold later for an inflated price because cemetery space is increasingly sparse, while new cemeteries are introduced slowly and do not keep up with the demand. However, in countries with equally high population density, funeral cost escalation is more evident in places with higher (Burundi, Nigeria) rather than lower (Korea, Dominican Republic) death rate. Therefore, higher population density and higher death rate should be taken together to define the cadastral burden of death (later referred to as Land shortage).

Fifth, cremation can significantly decrease death-related costs (Basmajian and Coutts, 2010) by limiting the amount of the most expensive items required for a funeral. Thus, cremation substantially reduces the consumption of the three most expensive items—coffins, burial land size, and tombstone. In most cases, urns with cremated ashes are kept in columbariums, renting which is significantly cheaper than procuring burial land, and erecting a tombstone. Additionally, cremation lowers coffin requirements (Hupková, 2014). Hence, countries where cremation accounts for a significant share of body disposal demonstrate significantly lower costs of dying.

Sixth, since death is mostly regulated by religion, religious requirements for a burial can either increase or decrease the costs of bereavement. For instance, Islam specifies that a grave should be as inconspicuous as possible, while a tombstone should be not more than 25–30 cm tall (Talim ul-Haq, 2001). This significantly lowers tombstone expenditure in the MENA compared to other regions. Additionally, in many countries local religious belief hampers wider usage of cremation, thus increasing average death costs. Religions assuming soul reincarnation (Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism) are leaning to cremation to alleviate post-death transformation of the soul. Islam strictly forbids cremation (Daar and Khitamy, 2001). Traditional African beliefs staunchly oppose cremation, while the majority of Christian denominations allow it, but its practice in Christian-majority countries remains mixed (Cremation Society of Great Britain, 2017). In Bolivia cremation is often rejected due to the Biblical association of fire with hell (Justiniano, 2018). In Ghana, Uganda, and Zimbabwe there is a belief that the soul of a diseased person is not completely separated from the family, and often returns to affect earthly developments, and hence requires an abode in a dead body (BBC, 2018; Wireko, 2015). Hence there is a strongly held position in sub-Saharan Africa that cremation is tantamount to body “mutilation” (Nshimyumurwa, 2012).

Government reaction

Government reaction to household death overspending can range from problem neglect to a full-fledged regulation. Several major factors may affect the government interference. First is a government’s capability to address the problem. Specifically, death-related overspending may undermine many households’ solvency, but serve as an economic multiplicator, sustaining those who provide funeral services and products (like tombstone and coffin producers, or funeral catering services). Thus, a government’s regulatory quality—its ability to formulate and advance a policy course that reconciles opposing economic interests for the common good—becomes crucial.

Additionally, in many countries, powerful lobbies benefiting from funeral cost inflation, oppose government drives to control or even regulate the sphere. Various reports link the failure of respective parliaments in Kyrgyzstan (RFE/RL, 2018) and Benin (Ribouis, 2018) to put upper funeral spending limits to vested interest opposition. Parliaments in Tanzania, Indonesia, Moldova also have been discussing draft laws for many years without any progress. In Kazakhstan funeral agencies staunchly oppose the introduction of a crematorium in the country, because they believe crematoria can substantially lower funeral agency profits (Sabitov, 2014). Therefore, higher levels of government integrity—measured as government ability to withstand favoritism—should be associated with a higher probability of government regulation of death overspending.

Second, a major factor prompting government interference is the urgency and pressure of the death overspending. The survey of cross-country legislation shows that almost all states actively regulating funerals have poor government effectiveness (Tajikistan, Nigeria, Swaziland, etc.). Lower government effectiveness results in state capture, weak provision of public goods (Cai et al., 2020), with concomitant high corruption (Sadigov, 2016, 2017), significant income inequality, and a deep sense of social injustice. Most probably, cleptocratic regimes with low government effectiveness, and resulting inequality and sense of social injustice, try not to irritate broader destitute population by preventing provocative displays of wealth in funeral ceremonies. These displays, by emphasizing deep economic gaps between elites and have-nots, may irritate the broad population segments, thus leading to active protests. Hence, the introduction of ceremony regulations serves to preserve socio-political stability through concealing phenomena that unambiguously emphasize economic inequality.

In the same vein, the higher is the financial cost of bereavement, the more likely should the government interference be, because financially unbearable situation may threaten social stability. Land shortage (population density combined with death rate), and closely associated cremation rates can also affect the pressure of funeral overspending, thus triggering government interference.

Conceptual model

How the interplay of the mentioned factors may come together to increase death costs, and raise the urgency of the government interference? The likelihood of death overspending differs by countries. Cultures with a high premium on familism and bonding social capital, are characterized by a greater household motivation to enter emulative ceremonial consumption, and overspend on funerals beyond their means. The higher is income inequality in this collective culture, the higher is the motivation of a less well-off household to enter status competition with more prosperous households to symbolically negate financial strain, and underline its “normality” by societal standards. Hence the combination of collectivist culture and income inequality creates a collectivist pressure that inflates the costs of death.

Globalization and massive economic changes of the recent decades led to a significant transformation of societies throughout the world. Rising urbanization, and standards of living led to two fundamental changes in the administration of the rites of passage. First, traditional village hierarchies of status (when local elders or family heads led collective ceremonies) were undermined. Second, socio-economic changes created a new prosperous middle class, with an ambition to fill status vacuum left by the demise of the traditional hierarchies. This nouveau-riche class strives to translate its economic capital into a social one, albeit within older collectivist social patterns of patron-client relationships. While the vacuum left by the demise of the older hierarchies of prestige motivates the nouveau-riche to demonstrate conspicuous funeral consumption, collectivist pressure pushes less well-off households to emulate these high standards. Hence, the combination of high economic growth leading to the ascendance of the new economically successful class, and the demise of older hierarchies of prestige, and concomitant rise in economic gap between nouveau-riche and ordinary population, sets in a negative spill-over, escalating the death costs.

The push of escalating costs of death may be reduced by exit options available for the households. The strength of superstition in a society defines the popularity of such cost-cutting options like cremation, and life insurance, while fueling cost-increasing donations to priest. Land shortage (population density combined with death rate) should increase death costs. The predominance and acceptance of cremation as a body disposal outlet should decrease death costs. For this reason, countries with a Muslim majority population (forbidden from practicing cremation) and the dominance of ancestor worship should experience higher death costs.

Government’s reaction to death overspending depends on the balance between its capabilities (including budgetary resources and administrative-political control over policy-making), and the scale of the problem that its population faces.

I draw the following propositions from the discussion:

Proposition 1: High urbanization, as well as rapid socio-economic changes (and concomitant socio-political and economic instability) for the past decade (since the last global economic crisis) should be associated with higher death costs.

Proposition 2: Countries with a combination of strong collectivism and high barriers for economic mobility are more likely to face the problem of death overspending.

Proposition 3: Countries with a lower share of cremation (including Muslim majority countries) are more likely to experience high death cost problem.

Proposition 4: Countries with a higher level of superstition (including ancestor worship) are more likely to experience high death cost problem.

Proposition 5: Countries with a higher level of cadastral burden of death (high population density combined by high death rate) are more likely to experience high death cost problem.

Proposition 6: Countries with a better regulatory quality to reconcile opposing private-public economic interests are more likely to regulate death overspending.

Proposition 7: Countries with more effective bureaucracies to face vested interests are more likely to introduce and effectively enforce policies regulating death costs.

Research design

To examine the outlined propositions, I use simple logistic and multinomial logistic regression results of a comprehensive dataset of 118 countries for which the death cost estimates could be collected. In the phase 1 of the research, I use logistic regression to identify the impact of relevant factors on the probability of the incidence of death cost inflation. In the phase 2, I use multinomial logistic regression to assess the impact of the relevant variables on the probability of various government reactions, once their population faces high death costs (relative to its income). Where possible, I complement quantitative analysis with qualitative information.

Phase 1. What societies are likely to face death-related overspending?

Variables

Table 1 provides the description of key variables for Phase 1 analysis. There are neither cross-country measurements of the average amount of death-related household expenditure, nor the data establishing that these amounts are within or beyond the affordability range for respective populations in different countries, or put simply—whether the average cost of death puts a disproportionate burden on households to stir social debate, parliamentary hearings, or other public uneasiness. Hence, data needed to be gathered. To calculate country-specific data, I followed several steps.

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics for phase 1 analysis.

Variable	Measurement	N	Mean	SD	Min	Max	Source
Dependent
Death-related household overspending	1 = Problem exists	118	0.3983051	0.4916366	0	1	Constructed from country-specific legislative and judiciary proceedings, and mass media
Independent
Superstition	% of people who believe in evil eye, sorcerers, black magic, witchcraft	118	48.59536	20.07149	7.56	95	Constructed from Pew Forum (2012), Pew Forum (2018), Tortora (2010), Inoguchi (2005, 2006, 2007).
Instability	Reverse of Political stability multiplied by Growth rate	118	8.811567	7.515645	−5.98851	37.2456	World Bank (2017)
Growth rate	Average % of annual GDP growth between 2008–2017	118	3.643687	2.382042	−2.81732	10.10075	World Bank (2017)
Political stability	Political stability and absence of violence/terrorism	118	−0.206713	0.9139481	−2.78077	1.585588	World Bank (2017)
Collectivist pressure	GINI multiplied by Collectivism score	118	2738.907	1049.072	26.1	4829.8	Solt (2019) and Beugelsdijk and Welzel (2018)
GINI	GINI coefficients	118	37.57627	7.591456	23.3	60.3	Solt (2019)
Collectivism	Collectivism score	118	70.85681	19.76213	1	98.3	Beugelsdijk and Welzel (2018)
Cremation	Share of cremation in total body disposal	118	23.06576	31.73721	0	99.97	Cremation Society of Great Britain (2017)
Land shortage	Death rate multiplied by Population density	118	1800.705	5441.284	12.54958	44,350.2	World Bank (2017)
Death rate	Death rate, crude (per 1000 people)	118	8.094415	2.814398	3.3	15.5	World Bank (2017)
Population density	Population density (people per sq. km of land area)	118	278.0578	975.2565	1.979741	7915.73	World Bank (2017)
Urbanization	Urban population (% of total population)	118	59.23119	22.08578	12.706	100	World Bank (2017)
Muslim majority	1 = Muslims constitute more than 50%	118	0.2542373	0.4372885	0	1	Constructed from respective national censuses

To identify whether a median household in a given country faces the problem associated with death costs or not, I use a binary dependent variable: whether a country experiences death-associated overspending problem (=1), or not (=0). This binary variable is an intersection of the two measures: 1. how many month’ worth of annual income a median household should spend to afford an average country-specific funeral costs, and 2. whether death costs cause population discontent judged by public debates in a country’s mass media, legislation, parliament, or judiciary proceedings.

First, the initial component (how many months’ worth of annual income a median household should spend to afford average funeral) is calculated by dividing average country-specific absolute costs of funerals by median household income for that country (Phelps and Crabtree, 2013). To obtain a reliable measure of the death costs in different countries, I followed several steps. First, I surveyed all relevant open sources in each case-country for an itemized cost of a typical funeral (in USD as of the year 2017). I chose sources which include all pre-, during-, and post-funeral costs. Cultures vary greatly in funeral traditions. Some societies require music (mainly in Africa and Western countries), in others tombstones feature prominently (post-Soviet countries), while in East Asia and some Muslim countries burial land substantially affects funeral prices. Therefore, taking funeral ceremony alone may not provide an adequate measure of its financial burden.

To double-check the obtained figures that embrace pre-, during, and post-funeral costs, I also contacted several funeral agencies or experts for itemized estimate of an average cost of the ceremonies in their respective countries. Then I compared data from several country-specific sources providing the estimate of average death costs. As a result, I obtained the average measure of financial costs of death for each case-country expressed in US dollars for cross-country comparability.

Average absolute cost of death (expressed in USD) cannot be treated in absolute terms, because the standards of living vary greatly across countries. To gauge the scale of the problem, the costs should be compared to incomes. In the majority of countries, the bulk of death costs are covered by households rather than individuals. Therefore, this research focuses on the burden that the death costs have on a household budget. Moreover, since higher wages/employment rates combined with lower population numbers may skew household incomes, I do not use average household income. Instead I use data for median household income, a figure that portrays a typical (rather than the average of a wealthy and poor) household in each country. To calculate the financial burden of death, I divide average absolute cost of a typical funeral for each country (expressed in USD) by a median household income for that country obtained through Median Household Income survey (Phelps and Crabtree, 2013). The resulting figure shows the number of months that a median household should save to afford the average country-specific funeral. This number represents Financial burden of death variable of the study.

The inclusion of the second component (whether funeral spending is a publicly debated issue in a country’s mass media, legislation, parliamentary debates, or judiciary proceedings) has its own justification. In many world countries high financial costs of death may not necessarily lead to the problem, while in others a relatively minor financial burden may cause a greater social discontent. To put it other way, high death costs by themselves do not automatically lead to the social problem in the form of population discontent. High Financial burden of death is thus a necessary, but not sufficient condition to qualify a country as “problematic.” To put quantitative financial burden data on a qualitative context, I surveyed available parliamentary, court, expert, or mass media reports on whether death-related costs cause protest, court appeals, or other discontent. Exhaustive internet search of key words (“restriction on funeral costs,” “high death cost,” “funeral cost court hearing,” “parliamentary debate on funeral restrictions”) was administered using R statistical program. If any data is found on the discontent in the public sources outlined above, I qualify country as experiencing discontent (=1), or not experiencing discontent (=0).

Finally, I juxtapose this qualitative country-specific data on discontent with the figures on the financial burden of death. Comparison of these two indicators shows a balanced picture of the funeral overspending problem in the case countries. The comparison of the two indicators shows that the countries which have an average death costs that require annual household savings of 11 months or more, have more than 50% chance of facing public debates (legislative discussion, media and expert reports, and court hearings) on funeral overspending. On the other hand, the majority of countries whose households have to spend on average less than 11 months’ value of their savings on a funeral, have less than 50% chance of public debates on the matter. Hence, if a country has an average death costs that require annual household savings of 11 months or more, then a median household in that country is highly likely to experience funeral overspending (=1). If a country-specific number is below 11 months, then I qualify the country as the one where a median household does not experience death costs as financially burdensome (=0).

If a country experiences funeral overspending (=1) and simultaneously public debates and discontent about average death costs (=1), then I qualify country as experiencing death-related overspending as a problem (dependent variable =1) (see Table 2). If a country has a high financial strain of death costs (equal to or above 11 months’ value of an annual median household income), but no public discussions on death costs, then I define country as the one with “latent problem.” I define the countries where there is simultaneously an active public discussion of the problem, while quantitative numbers point to a relatively low⁵ financial burden of death, as the countries with “inflated problem.” Finally, countries which experience low financial burden of death, and no public debates on the burden of funeral costs, are qualified as having “no problem” (Table 2).

Table 2.

Categorization of case-countries by the incidence of death-related expenditure as a problem.

		Public debate about the costs of death
		No	Yes
Financial burden of death	Low burden	No problem	Inflated problem
Financial burden of death	High burden	Latent problem	Problematic countries

Data for the phase 1 analysis is of a cross-sectional nature. The baseline model embraces all relevant variables drawn from the conceptual model. Superstition is measured by the percentage of the country population who believe in the evil eye, sorcerers, black magic, witchcraft. The measure is constructed from the Pew Forum (2012, 2018). Where the data for a country was missing from Pew Forum surveys, I referred to Gallup data (Tortora, 2010) and Asian Barometer (Inoguchi, 2005, 2006, 2007). The assumption here is that superstition figures (as highly culturally embedded ones) change very slowly over time, and therefore relevant data obtained within plus/minus 10 years should not differ significantly.

Instability (as the combination of reversed Political stability and Growth rate) reflects socio-economic and political change, and the transformation of traditional hierarchies. Taking economic effects and socio-political effects of transformations separately might introduce bias into the calculation since socio-political and economic transformations are tightly interconnected and usually mutually reinforce each other. Hence, to generate the variable, first I translate Political stability (an index of Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism drawn from World Bank’s World Development Indicators) scores (ranging from −3 to 2) to positive numbers.⁶ Since I am measuring instability, in the next stage I reverse the obtained scores since higher scores need to be associated with the higher instability. In the final stage, I multiply the reversed positive scores by annual economic Growth rate (drawn from World Bank (2017)). The resulting indicator accounts for the combined impact of socio-political and economic instability.

To account for social pressure to overspend on the rituals of passage, I use Collectivist Pressure (as the combination of GINI and Collectivism score). Since, during the literature review and conceptual model clarification, inequality is tightly interrelated with and mutually reinforcing collectivism, I use an interaction term of the both measures. Inequality is measured through GINI coefficients. Collectivism is measured through Beugelsdijk and Welzel’s (2018) relevant scores. This measure has a range of advantages⁷ over similar collectivism measures (like Hofstede’s collectivism scores and Emancipative Values measure), embracing a significantly greater number of country cases.

Cremation denotes the latest data on the percentage of death cases when cremation was used for body disposal. To measure the cadastral burden of death, I employ Land Shortage denoting an interaction term between Death Rate and Population Density. The share of urbanites in general population is expressed by Urbanization variable, while a Muslim majority denotes whether 50% or more of a country’s population is Muslim.

For the second phase of research I include only the problematic countries (i.e. the ones which have both high financial burden of death costs, and where simultaneously there are public discussions on the salience of the cost of funerals).

Model specification

Pearson correlation coefficients of independent variables shows only one case of a substantial correlation (>0.5)—between Instability and Urbanization (−0.59). This is not unexpected, since modernized societies with high urbanization usually demonstrate greater political stability and lower GDP growth rates compared to politically unstable societies. Collinearity diagnostics of the resulting model shows no significant Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) values (see online Supplemental Appendix 1). As a measure of model fit, I calculate Proportional Reduction in Error (PRE), which identifies the level of predictive leverage of logistic regression independent variable over dependent variable (Kviz, 1981). The results land support for the model: PRE for the model is 61.70%, while the model demonstrates 81% prediction correctness (see online Supplemental Appendix 1). Consequently, the equation for the model, predicting the probability of the problem incidence in country i, is the following⁸:

\begin{array}{l} Y_{i} = β_{0} + β_{1} {Superstition}_{i} + β_{2} Political {Stability}_{i} \\ + β_{3} Growth {rate}_{i} + β_{4} GINI + β_{5} {Collectivism}_{i} \\ + β_{6} {Cremation}_{i} + β_{7} Death {rate}_{i} + β_{8} Population {density}_{i} \\ + β_{9} Muslim {majority}_{i} + β_{10} {Urbanization}_{i} + ε_{i} \end{array}

Phase 2. Government reaction to the problem

Variables

In phase two of the research, I focus on government reaction to the death-related overspending. The variables included into the second phase (Table 3) reflect important factors drawn from earlier discussion on government capabilities and problem salience. To analyze government reactions, I use multinomial logistic regression because my dependent variable is a nominal one denoting different government reactions to the problem, from no policy response to full-fledged government regulation.

Table 3.

Descriptive statistics for phase 2 analysis.

Variable	Measurement	N	Mean	SD	Min	Max	Source
Dependent
Government reaction	How a government reacts to the death-related overspending	118	0.5762712	0.8712579	0	3	Constructed from official state legislation
Independent
Income	GNI per capita, Atlas method (current USD)	118	12,469.07	17,172.56	280	81,130	World Bank (2017)
Regulatory quality	Regulatory quality index	118	0.0944587	0.9345483	−2.00081	2.163465	Kaufmann et al. (2011)
Government integrity	Measure of government favoritism	118	3.150263	0.9621031	1.702473	5.854833	World Economic Forum (2018)
Financial burden of death	How many months a median household should save to afford country-specific average cost of death	118	9.068983	11.0459	0.43	70.3	Constructed from academic research, mass media, funeral agency data
Land shortage	Death rate multiplied by population density	118	1800.705	5441.284	12.54958	44,350.2	World Bank (2017)
Death rate	Death rate, crude (per 1000 people)	118	8.094415	2.814398	3.3	15.5	World Bank (2017)
Population density	Population density (people per sq. km of land area)	118	278.0578	975.2565	1.979741	7915.73	World Bank (2017)
Cremation	Share of cremation in total body disposal	118	23.06576	31.73721	0	99.97	Cremation Society of Great Britain (2017)
GINI	GINI coefficients	118	37.57627	7.591456	23.3	60.3	Solt (2019)

Here I group the countries into the following categories:

Countries with no problem. This is the biggest group of countries, consisting of 72 cases.

Countries that face a problem, but do not undertake any measures to control it. According to the data, there are 32 such countries. In terms of government capability, my focus here is on the impact of Regulatory quality on the decision of a government to abstain from interference, and side with those business interests who earn from escalating costs of dying. Other variables of interest here are Land Shortage, Cremation, and other variables which increase the urgency of the problem in the eyes of policymakers.

Six countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa (Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Benin, Tanzania), where draft laws regulating death costs were raised in parliaments, but had so far not been passed. I am interested to find out the impact of Government Integrity to stand up to a possible interference by vested interests of funeral industry.

Eight states from Europe, Asia, Africa, which introduced rules that regulate death costs either on a sub-national or national level. This group includes Azerbaijan, Armenia, China, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Swaziland, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Here the interplay of both government capabilities and problem urgency is important.

Since I am interested in the difference between the states that displayed full or partial government regulation (category 4) and the ones that did not react (category 2), I use both of these outcomes as my base outcomes. Thus, the analysis is based on two multinomial regression models with different base outcomes.

Independent variables reflect the proposed theoretical model. First, since there are no data on the share of budget that each country channels (or potentially can channel) to the problem solution, I use GNI per capita (Income) as a proxy, since it can show a government’s potential tax base. Second, Regulatory quality denotes a government’s ability to reconcile clashing economic interests of funeral service providers and service purchasers. Third, to measure a government’s ability to devise and enforce policies in the face of opposition from vested interests, I use Government integrity. Fourth, Funeral cost denotes the monetary value of an average country-specific funeral ceremony. The variable shows financial stress of death-related overspending, and hence the urgency of the situation in governments’ eyes. Governments can view the situation as critical if a society has considerable Death rate, combined with a shortage of burial land (Population density). Their combination yields a measure of cadastral burden of death—Land shortage. Cremation shows the share of bodies disposed through incineration, while GINI measures income inequality.

Model specification for Phase 2 analysis

Pearson correlation coefficients of independent variables shows that Income is highly correlated with Regulatory quality (r = 0.81). Income is also correlated with Government integrity (r = 0.66), and Cremation (r = 0.55). All other variables demonstrate moderate levels of correlation. Therefore, I leave Income out of the original model. Collinearity diagnostics of the resulting model shows no significant VIF values (see online Supplemental Appendix 1). Consequently, the equation for the model, predicting the probability of the government i's policy interference to regulate the escalating death cost, is the following:

\begin{array}{l} Y_{i} = β_{0} + β_{1} Regulatory {quality}_{i} + β_{2} Government {integrity}_{i} \\ + β_{3} Financial {cost}_{i} + β_{4} Land {shortage}_{i} \\ + β_{5} {Cremation}_{i} + β_{6} {GINI}_{i} + ε_{i} \end{array}

Phase 1 analysis results

Descriptive highlights

The analysis of data from 118 countries shows that the average cross-country cost of dying is USD4142 (or 4.25 months’ worth of a median household income in the surveyed countries). This means that an average household in the surveyed countries should channel slightly more than 4 months’ value of its annual income to cover a death of its member.

The surveyed countries can be grouped into three big categories according to the major cause behind their high death costs. First, land shortage combined with religious rejection of cremation in many countries (Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, Maldives, Rwanda, Uganda) leads to soaring burial-land price, thus increasing household debt. Second, in some countries the lack of transparency and control enables funeral service providers to put exorbitant prices and force clients to pay extra (Kollewe, 2018; The Economist, 2018). Third, social competition to provide a multi-day lavish funeral feast (Cameroon, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan) or impressive tomb monuments (China, Armenia) bloats funeral costs. Collectivist pressure is positively associated with the financial burden of death costs (Figure 1) even if adjusting for the extreme outliers (Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 1.

The impact of Collectivist pressure on a household’s funeral spending.

Figure 2.

The impact of Collectivist pressure on a household’s funeral spending (top 10 outliers excluded).

Figure 3.

The impact of Collectivist pressure on a household’s funeral spending—the top and the bottom outliers excluded.

Statistical analysis

To summarize, Table 4 reflects logistic multiple regression results which confirm some of the study’s assumptions. As predicted by the proposed model, the problem of death overspending is likely to emerge in the countries with high superstition among the population, with lower cremation rates, a high cadastral burden of death (Land shortage), low urbanization, and Muslim majority population. Each 1-percentage increase in the share of those who believe in the possibility of supernatural forces to meddle into human affairs is associated with between 0.033 and 0.45 in the logged odds of the incidence of death-related overspending (Proposition 4), holding the other independent variables constant.

Table 4.

Predictors of the problem of death overspending.

Dependent variable: incidence of death overspending
	Model 1	Model 2
General variables
Superstition	0.033 (0.0172)**	0.045 (0.017)***
Cremation	−0.029 (0.0136)**	−0.034 (0.013)***
Muslim majority	1.229 (0.754)*	0.991 (0.728)
Socio-political stability
Political stability	−0.490 (1.02)
Growth rate	0.418 (0.465)
Instability	0.018 (0.185)
Urbanization		−0.055 (0.016)***
Collectivism
GINI	0.461 (0.361)	0.350 (0.357)
Collectivism	0.153 (0.171)	0.117 (0.169)
Collectivist pressure	−0.004 (0.004)	−0.003 (0.004)
Cadastral burden of death
Death rate	−0.040 (0.139)	−0.211 (0.152)
Population density	−0.011 (0.004)**	−0.009 (0.004)**
Land shortage	0.002 (0.001)***	0.002 (0.001)***
Constant	−20.774 (13.558)	−11.076 (13.463)
Observations	118	118
Pseudo R²	0.4320	0.4343

Absolute value of standard errors in parentheses.

p < 0.10 (significant at 10% in a two-tailed t-test). **p < 0.05 (significant at 5%). ***p < 0.01 (significant at 1%).

Higher rate of Urbanization leads to −0.055 decrease in the logged odds of funeral profligacy (Proposition 1). Economically more self-sufficient and ideationally free from collectivist pressure, urbanites are more likely to have personal preferences for managing funerals. The tide of modernization, and concomitant rationality, can potentially also wash away entrenched superstitions, thus decreasing death-related costs. However, meanwhile societies living through initial stages of this transformation are experiencing the surge of death costs.

Although positively associated with the incidence of death overspending, socio-political instability in the wake of deep economic transformations is not statistically significant (Proposition 1). It seems that the cases of China (Brown et al., 2011), Azerbaijan (BBC, 2016), and other developing countries, where the scale of the death costs for the past decades has been increasing parallel to an unprecedented expansion in the disposable population income, is mediated by some other factors that need to be identified and studied further. Since many of these countries are (post-)socialist ones, we may tentatively assume that a profligate funeral spending serves to signal the readiness of newly affluent classes to fill in ideological vacuum left by the demise of socialist morals crumbling under the onslaught of consumerism. Another important factor may be migration (Gerber and Zavisca, 2020). Notwithstanding these preliminary ideas, the matter requires further analysis beyond the scope of this study.

The dominance of Muslim population increases the probability of death overspending (Proposition 3). Islam unequivocally prescribes modesty in funeral administration (Mnour, 2017), which should substantially decrease the costs for tombstone and funeral ceremony, among other items. However, many countries with high death costs (Guinea-Bissau, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Tajikistan) are Muslim-majority countries. This may be due to several factors. First, Islam prescribes cremation, thus leading to increase in the death costs. Second, many Muslim-majority countries have a nominal abidance and weaker practice of Islamic regulations among respective populations. The level of religiosity is not uniform across Muslim countries. In such post-Communist secularized Muslim-majority countries as Kyrgyzstan, or Tajikistan (Pew Forum, 2012), population may not strictly abide by Islamic precepts instructing for a modest funeral and tombstone. In African Muslim-majority countries (like Senegal, Sudan, or Niger), Islam is practiced with heavy vestiges of indigenous magical ancestor worship and exorcism (Yang, 2010). Therefore, it is not uncommon for the local people to provide lavish funeral feasts as a continuation of earlier tradition, although these ceremonies are nominally administered according to Muslim rituals.

Higher cadastral pressure (higher death rate and lower burial land availability) increases the probability of the problem emergence (Proposition 5), while the prevalence of cremation may reduce the problem (Proposition 4). All those high death pressure societies which have significant cremation rates (Japan, Belgium, Singapore, Hong Kong), demonstrate significantly lower financial costs of death for households than countries with similar cadastral pressure but lower cremation rates (Bangladesh, Palestine, Burundi, Lebanon, Nigeria).

Higher pressure of the collectivist values combined with deep barriers for socio-economic mobility is not statistically significant in predicting the incidence of funeral extravagance (Proposition 2). Of course, cross-country evidence shows that Collectivist pressure in many regions pushes households into emulative ritual spending—be it lavish funeral feasts in Kyrgyzstan (Orozobekova, 2005) or Botswana (Sunday Standard, 2018), or opulent tombstones in Azerbaijan (Jamnews, 2018) or China (LaFraniere, 2011). The power of these social norms forces relatively destitute households to join “spending competition” driven by well-off middle class. However, data for one particular region—Latin America—skews the association in the opposite direction. Specifically, while the region’s countries have on average one of the highest Collectivism (67.88) and Collectivism pressure (2573) scores, they nevertheless demonstrate relatively modest financial burden of funeral costs (the regional average of 3.93 months’ value of annual median household income). Some clues for low Latin American death costs can be traced to a wider practice of cremation, as well as a wide spread of columbarium burials (thus dramatically decreasing the costs of burial land and tombstone) unlike in post-Soviet, sub-Saharan, and Muslim-majority countries. Further research into the association between collectivism and funeral spending in Latin America is thus required.

Since logistic regression coefficients are difficult to interpret, and to convey a better sense of the regression results, I plot average marginal effects (with 95% confidence intervals) on the probability scale computed from the logistic regression with relevant variables (Figure 4). Average marginal effects for a logistic regression denote an expected probability of obtaining a dependent variable as a result of a discrete one-unit change in each of the independent variables as an average for the entire set of research observations (Mood, 2009). The results show that on average a one-unit increase in Instability (e.g. from 1 point to 2 points) increases the expected probability of death overspending by 0.7%.

Figure 4.

Average marginal effects on the probability of death-related over-spending.

Phase 2 analysis results

Descriptive highlights

There are overall 46 countries where the problem of death overspending exists according to the research. The mean financial burden of death costs in these countries equals 16.00 months’ worth of annual household income, while in countries with no problem this figure equals 4.47 months. Among the countries where both draft laws were blocked (Tanzania, Benin, Moldova), and the ones who fully or partially regulate death spending (China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Swaziland, etc.), the majority constitutes either post-Communist or sub-Saharan African countries.

It is interesting that some states (Azerbaijan, Swaziland, Armenia) regulate funerals, while not interfering into the regulation of other important rites of passage, such as weddings. It is argued (BBC, 2016) that the difference may lie in the power of “public condemnation,” which is much more forceful in matters of funerals than weddings. That is, community pressure is much easier on those who do not live up to lofty wedding consumption standards rather than on those who do not provide (by community standards) “adequate” funeral arrangements, however financially burdensome funeral expenses might be. Whereas weddings are becoming increasingly secularized (with “white gown” wedding gradually becoming an international standard (Pauli and Dawids, 2017)), funerals are still squarely in the fold of local religious traditions, viewing even minor departure from the established funeral “norms” as sacrilege. That is why such densely populated areas like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, Maldives, Palestine, Rwanda, Uganda are slow to introduce cremation despite a significant shortage of available burial land because respective religious traditions (Islam in MENA and ancestral worship in Central Africa) do not accept cremation. In short, since funeral routine is less open to change than weddings, the population faces a greater difficulty to tackle the problems arising from the former, hence raising the probability of government interference.

Statistical analysis

Tables 5 and 6 reflect respectively Model 1 (base outcome 1 = states did not undertake regulation) and Model 2 (base outcome 3 = states undertook full or partial regulation) multinomial regression results. The results for both of the models indicate that financial cost of funerals and government integrity significantly affect the chances of government regulation of death costs.

Table 5.

Multinomial logit regressions of government reaction outcomes compared to no policy response.

Multinomial logit
	No problem	Draft law blocked	Full or partial regulation
Government capabilities
Regulatory quality	2.505 (0.595)***	−1.397 (0.884)	−1.299 (1.057)
Government integrity	−1.229 (0.505)**	−0.330 (0.904)	1.926 (0.892)**
Problem urgency
Funeral cost	−0.0003 (0.0001)**	0.0003 (0.0002)*	0.0005 (0.0002)**
Land shortage	−0.0004 (0.0002)*	−0.0009 (0.0007)	−0.0001 (0.0004)
GINI	−0.143 (0.047)***	−0.074 (0.068)	0.032 (0.069)
Exit variable
Cremation	0.024 (0.013)*	−0.480 (0.529)	−0.060 (0.039)
Constant	11.595 (2.948)***	2.990 (4.883)	−11.356 (5.792)**
Observations	118
Pseudo R²	0.4013

Absolute value of robust standard errors in parentheses.

p < 0.10 (significant at around 10% in a two-tailed t-test). **p < 0.05 (significant at 5%). ***p < 0.01 (significant at 1%).

Table 6.

Multinomial logit regressions of government reaction outcomes compared to full or partial regulation.

Multinomial logit
	No problem	No policy response	Draft law blocked
Government capabilities
Regulatory quality	3.804 (1.124)***	1.299 (1.057)	2.696 (1.265)**
Government integrity	−3.156 (0.996)***	−1.926 (0.892)**	−2.256 (1.188)*
Problem urgency
Funeral cost	−0.0008 (0.0002)***	−0.0005 (0.0002)**	−0.0001 (0.0002)
Land shortage	−0.0002 (0.0004)	0.0001 (0.0004)	−0.0007 (0.0008)
GINI	−0.176 (0.076)**	−0.032 (0.069)	−0.106 (0.085)
Exit variable
Cremation	0.084 (0.040)**	0.060 (0.039)	−0.419 (0.530)
Constant	22.951 (6.269)***	11.356 (5.792)**	14.346 (7.061)**
Observations	118
Pseudo R²	0.4013

Absolute value of robust standard errors in parentheses.

p < 0.10 (significant at around 10% in a two-tailed t-test). **p < 0.05 (significant at 5%). ***p < 0.01 (significant at 1%).

Specifically, a high financial cost of funerals significantly decreases the chances of death cost escalation incidence compared to the lack of government interference. According to the Model 1, the higher financial cost of funerals is associated with the higher log odds of partial or full government regulation compared to the government’s neglect of the problem. The same result is noticeable in the Model 2, when a base outcome is full or partial government regulation. Specifically, a one-unit decrease in Funeral Costs is associated with an increase in the relative log odds of no government interference compared to full and partial government regulation of the death costs.

As the financial costs of a funeral rise, so does the probability of the failure to pass legislation curbing death costs in our research sample. Thus, a one-unit increase in Financial cost of funerals leads to a statistically significant increase in the log odds of parliamentary blocking or foot-dragging of draft laws to regulate death-related costs compared to the governments’ neglect of the problem altogether. Simultaneously, according to the Model 1, a one-unit increase in Government Integrity is associated with a 1.92 increase in the relative log odds of full or partial government regulation versus no government response. This indicates that a government’s ability to control vested interests (especially, their influence on parliaments’ decisions) is a strong predictor of whether a government will introduce death-cost regulations (corroborating Proposition 7) once the problem of funeral overspending emerges. This result perfectly explains the cases of Kyrgyzstan (RFE/RL, 2018) and Benin (Ribouis, 2018), where the vested interest groups were actively involved in blocking the attempts to pass the regulatory laws through parliaments.

The remaining factors have an insignificant effect. Specifically, Regulatory quality is statistically insignificant in predicting a government’s regulation of death overspending. Compared to Government integrity, Regulatory quality should be less important in predicting government regulation. In case of the decision to regulate death costs, governments step in to support the households which are on a spending side, and hence curtails the earnings of the businesses who earn from death cost escalation. Thus, the very government decision to check death costs means irrelevance of Regulatory quality, which reflects state’s ability to reconcile opposing economic interests.

Almost all of the variables are associated with the lack of the death-cost overspending in the way predicted by the conceptual model. However, while the cadastral burden of death (Land shortage), GINI, and Cremation rates are significant in explaining the incidence of death-related overspending, these factors are statistically insignificant in predicting government regulation of death costs.

Conclusion

Spanning different regions, death overspending is a phenomenon with potentially multiple troublesome implications. The survey shows that 46 countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa face the problem to a varying extent. Throughout the analyzed 118 countries the average cost of death is USD 4142, which accounts for 4.25 month’s worth of an annual household income. Death-related overspending leads to household debt, strains social stability (LaFraniere, 2011), and aggravates health problems. However, government reaction in the problem-stricken countries so far was not uniform, ranging from a total neglect to a nation-wide regulation.

This article proposed the conceptual model, explaining the emergence of the problem by rapid socio-economic transformations of the past several decades. Fundamental economic changes throughout the globe led to two important consequences: 1. gradual fragmentation of traditional hierarchies of status and prestige (based in the majority of countries on village communalism), and 2. simultaneous economic ascendance of newly affluent urbanized middle classes. While earlier traditional authority structures (village elders, or aged household members) regulated public events like funerals, the demise of traditional authority left status vacuum. To fill this vacuum, new middle class uses collective gatherings like funerals to earn social prestige through generosity of profligate spending. Thus, middle classes strive to translate their economic power into a social one.

It is also assumed that the demise of older hierarchies does not spell the end of collectivist social ethos. While new elites try to capture leading roles in this ethos, the lingering traditional “norms” of superstition, ancestral worship, and conspicuous funeral consumption pull poorer households to replicate spending habits of affluent classes. The higher is income inequality and barriers for socio-economic mobility, the higher is the desire of poorer households to underline their “normality” by conforming to conspicuous funeral consumption. Globalizing economy and consumerist society provide ample opportunities to include new fancy items into “accepted” funeral organization. Hence, the combination of socio-economic instability, the rise of middle classes and the decline of traditional hierarchies of prestige, limited opportunities for economic mobility, to the backdrop of a strong collectivist ethos dominated by superstition, motivates funeral extravagance.

Logistic regression analysis of cross-country data supports some of these arguments. While socio-political instability in general does not explain the incidence of death-cost overspending in various countries, urbanization rates do. This may indicate that economic freedom and individualization as a result of urbanization leads to the emancipation of individuals from the clout of extended families, and rural norms to overspend on funerals as an obligation to reproduce social capital and prestige practiced in rural communities.

The regression results also indicate the statistical insignificance of collectivist values in a given society to cause death-related overspending. This may be due to an influence of data from Latin America. While in many regions (post-Soviet region, sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia) death overspending is tightly correlated with collectivism, in Latin American countries (constituting a large share of our research sample) significant levels of collectivism are accompanied with a relatively low financial burden of funerals. This, to a significant extent affects regression results. Generally, cross-country survey shows that societies with ancestral worship (Vietnam, China, sub-Saharan Africa) are dramatically more likely to experience significant death costs. Ancestral worship leads to greater spending on funeral food in Africa, opposition to cremation in densely populated mainland China, Burundi, and Uganda, significant burial land and gravestone expenses in Vietnam. However, since there are no standardized measures of ancestral worship, the variable could not be included into the research measurements.

Countries with a higher cadastral pressure (higher death rate and lower burial land availability), experience higher odds of death overspending, while the prevalence of Cremation may reduce the problem. The effect of Muslim majority population is mixed—while Islam rejects cremation (thus increasing the death costs), the religion prescribes modesty in funeral ceremonies.

Governments are more likely to react if they have effective bureaucracies to oppose vested interests (Government integrity), and their population on average faces higher Financial Costs of funerals. Government’s ability to reconcile opposing private economic interests (Regulatory quality) is less important than Government integrity, because the very government decision to curtail death costs means that the government curbs some economic interests (i.e. big business earnings) to easy economic strain on other agents (population spending).

The findings contribute to academic debates by suggesting several theoretical implications. First, rapid economic transformation and concomitant rise in middle classes and disposable incomes (especially in emerging markets) in the short term reinforce conservative collectivist values in many regions (except for Latin America). While in some societies rising modernization indeed signals change in attitudes, in many cases newly gained affluence fuels household competition for status/prestige—the staple coin of traditionalist-collectivist social order. The finding challenges the literature on cultural change accompanying modernization (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005; Inglehart and Welzel, 2010), which argues that improving economic welfare translates into a value shift uniformly throughout all developing and developed regions. Second, the study findings may also lend support to the economists’ argument that the poor households’ overspending decisions function as a reaction to psychological stress caused by barriers to socio-economic mobility (Banerjee and Duflo, 2011).

The research also has a policy-specific implication. Death cost escalation, and ensuing socio-economic problems are, to a significant extent, the result of the rejection of cremation on religious and traditional grounds. In many countries, powerful funeral industry lobby benefiting from burial costs and providing such services, oppose the introduction of crematoria which can substantially lower death costs. As a result, in some countries (Kazakhstan, Greece) there is a silent alliance between conservative religious authorities and the captains of death industry. Hence, instead of introducing costly funeral subsidies to offset escalating death costs, or enforcing cremation in a top-down administrative manner, governments may consider first to break the conservative alliance that blocks a wider penetration of crematoria.

Some limitations of the research need to be acknowledged. First, the lack of data prevented the inclusion of several important variables into the analysis. The most salient missing variable is the intensity of ancestor worship throughout the case-countries. Another relevant data missing from the research is the amount of budgetary resources available for tackling specifically the problem of death-related overspending. The lack of country-specific data on state funeral subsidies made it impossible to consider the variable in the analysis. While adequate measures do not currently exist, practitioners and researchers are well-advised to fill these data gaps. Second, the scale of the problem was calculated based on household data from 2013 and country-specific death costs data from 2017. While household incomes may have risen between 2013 and 2017, there might be a slight overestimation of the final results for each country (measured in months’ income for a median household to afford death costs).

Several suggestions for future research can be provided. First, as the research results have demonstrated, the effect of collectivism in Latin America, and disposable income in (post) socialist countries on death overspending requires further detailed analysis. Second, future studies can take up the research further by looking into the causes of difference in ritual regulation among the states. Specifically, why do some states selectively regulate only funerals (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Swaziland), while others (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) regulate simultaneously several rites of passage (funerals, weddings, and family celebrations)? Third, since death is regulated by local religions, they significantly affect both the escalation and decrease in relevant spending. However, the survey of case countries shows that religious traditions with a potential to lower death expenditure have weak impact on financial burden of death. Hence, a more nuanced research on the interrelation between religious precepts and funeral practices of respective population can be undertaken to establish a more nuanced impact of religious tradition on death overspending.

Supplemental Material

sj-doc-1-rss-10.1177_1043463121990015 – Supplemental material for Death beyond the means: Funeral overspending and its government regulation around the world

Supplemental material, sj-doc-1-rss-10.1177_1043463121990015 for Death beyond the means: Funeral overspending and its government regulation around the world by Turkhan Sadigov in Rationality and Society

Research Data

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Research Data, sj-dta-2-rss-10.1177_1043463121990015 for Death beyond the means: Funeral overspending and its government regulation around the world by Turkhan Sadigov in Rationality and Society

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Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study has been funded by the Institute of International Education.

Third-party material

The manuscript does not use any third-party material that requires permission.

ORCID iD

Turkhan Sadigov

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Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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