Is the “Choice” of cremation a mirage that may disappear??

June 3, 2026/Business, Cremation, Products/

On a rainy Monday Minnesota morning earlier this week I was doing my run indoors on the treadmill while I watched CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” business news broadcast. On that show Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son predicted that the coming “AI Revolution” will be 50 times bigger than the dot-com boom. You can read about that prediction here.

I coupled that prediction with my recent reading of professor Tanya Marsh’s article in The Conversation titled “Boom in cremation hides surprising truths about what Americans really want when they die”, which you can read here, that described the results from the Wake Forest Law School’s 2024 survey on Consumer Preferences in Death Care.

Adding in the fact that we are continuing to live in author John Naisbitt’s “Information Age”, where information is the key to knowledge, gave me a perspective on wondering if the disposition choice of cremation is truly as much of a “choice” as it seems to be or if its use by about 63% of the American public is because of other reasons. . . . .And, moving forward, if advanced information and knowledge gives Americans more access to Death Care choices, will cremation continue to be as popular as it seems to be?

Marsh, an attorney-professor at Wake Forest Law School, helped present a survey, which I’ll just refer to as the “Marsh Survey” that was funded by the Cremation Association of North America (CANA) and the Order of Good Death. It asked 1,500 Americans, in a nationally represented sample, questions on their consumer preferences of Death Care.

The survey had some very interesting results. Here’s just a few:

72.6% said they would “consider cremation”
33.4% ranked cremation as their 1st Choice
35.9% ranked casketed burial as their 1st Choice — outranking cremation

Those numbers seem to show a paradox of cremation choice with the fact that actual cremation use — as the cremation rate across America is well over 60% at this time. Marsh’s article also points out “The pattern holds across every region of the country, where actual casket burial rates closely match stated first-choice rates, while cremation rates far exceed them. For example, in the South, the burial rate closely tracked the 45.7% who ranked it as their first preference. But the cremation rate was 53.5%, nearly double the 27.3% who ranked it first.”

When seeing that data one could almost come to the conclusion that there are other factors in why so many choose cremation — most notably easy availablity and price. For instance one does not have to go purchase cemetery space if they decide on cremation, whereas a casketed burial needs a place to be buried. And, most funeral directors would anecdotally conclude that the lower price of cremation is a factor in its choice by many.

Where I believe the data gets interesting is when lesser known and newer disposition methods are introduced into the survey questions. The survey asks about the disposition methods of Green burial, alkaline hydrolysis, and natural organic reduction. Marsh’s article in The Conversation points out that those disposition methods are not well-known nor easily available across the country yet.

According to the article “the survey revealed remarkable openness to new methods”. For instance, after getting a brief description on each the data showed that:

56% said they would consider Green burial
39% were willing to consider water cremation (alkaline hydrolysis)
6% indicated that Natural Organic Reduction (Human composting) would be their first choice

Here’s how Professor Marsh summed up her article on the survey results:

“These numbers suggest significant unmet demand. Human composting was the first choice of nearly 6% of respondents – a striking figure for a method that has existed for only six years and is available in just a few states.

The big takeaway is that the cremation rate may be artificially inflated because of limitations on awareness, availability and legal access to greener alternatives.

The future of American death care probably isn’t a march toward more cremation. Instead, it’ll probably be a bumpy road of unmet wants, generational surprises and alternatives that need a little more time to get on people’s radars.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: Here’s where I’ll kick in my process of watching CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” and the idea of Masayoshi Son predicting the disrupting advent of artificial intelligence. If what is holding back these Death Care disposition processes is the idea that Americans don’t know about them or how to access them. . . . . I’m guessing that will be solved by the increased flow of informational knowledge that is to come with AI.

Just like the computer era and the internet era had young people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos figuring out how to capitalize on the boom, you can bet that there are young people doing the same today and I’m guessing that knowledge direct to the consumer, including about Death Care disposition methods and availability, will be coming forward fast.

My time on the front lines of funeral service from about 1980 thru 2010 saw a movement from casketed burials to cremation. One might ask, will the years 2030 to 2050 bring about the same kind of movement to a different method?

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