Can new technologies bring down the sky-high prices of funerals?
Some time ago, Shanghai released a set of data. As of the end of 2024, the registered population of Shanghai reached 15.3798 million. Among them, the number of registered elderly people aged 60 and above reached 5.7762 million, accounting for 37.6% of the total registered population.
In other words, there are approximately 4 elderly people among every ten Shanghai residents. This figure is somewhat shocking, and the overall aging situation in China is also not optimistic. It is estimated that China will enter the stage of severe aging in 2035 (with the proportion of people aged 65 and above exceeding 21%).
Japan, separated from us by a sea, has long been troubled by aging. On the "Respect for the Aged Day" last year, Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced that as of September 15, the number of elderly people in Japan was 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3% of the total population, an increase of 0.2 percentage points.
The increasing number of elderly people not only makes it difficult to support them but also poses a problem for their funerals.
Deeply influenced by Confucian culture, the Chinese people have always attached great importance to the funerals of the elderly. Mencius even said, "Taking care of the living is not enough to be regarded as a major event, only sending off the dead can be regarded as a major event." However, to have a grand and decent funeral requires financial support. Against the backdrop of soaring cemetery prices and high premiums for various services and supplies, more and more people can only sigh, "It's hard to live and even harder to die."
However, in recent years, the development of technology seems to have opened up new ideas for funeral forms. Especially when the younger generation's concept of funerals has changed significantly, their acceptance of new forms may curb the phenomenon of high - priced funerals.
Fancy funerals are more cost - effective
How much does a decent funeral cost?
According to a global funeral cost survey report released by the British life insurance agency SunLife in 2020, the average funeral cost around the world is about 10% of the local people's annual salary. Among them, the average funeral cost in Japan is as high as 3 million yen (about 200,000 RMB), accounting for about 68% of the average annual salary of the Japanese. In China, the funeral cost is about 37,375 yuan, accounting for about 45.4% of the average annual salary, ranking second in the world.
Now, funeral costs are still rising year by year. Data from the China Funeral Association shows that in 2024, the average cost of a traditional funeral across the country was about 78,000 yuan, and in first - tier cities, it was even as high as over 150,000 yuan.
Whether for ordinary Japanese families or Chinese families, the funeral expenses, which are much higher than those in other countries, are a considerable burden. Moreover, as the birth rate continues to decline, it means that these costs may be borne by only one family.
While families are suffering from high - priced funerals and the elderly are worried about having no place to be buried, new types of funerals have emerged in recent years.
At the beginning of last year, the Vulcan Centaur rocket developed by the United Launch Alliance (ULA) in the United States sent the "Peregrine" lunar lander developed by an American aerospace robotics company into space. Among the 20 payloads carried by the "Peregrine" to the moon, 5 were NASA scientific instruments, and the other 15 were from different customers, including two commercial space burial companies, Elysium Space and Celestis.
"Space burial", as the name suggests, is to take the ashes into space, where they turn into meteors and burn out. There is also another way, which is to put the ashes in a special container and launch it into space with an artificial satellite, which can orbit the earth for up to 240 years.
For most people who yearn for the universe, space burial is undoubtedly a very romantic way to end one's life. However, going to the universe is not an easy thing to achieve. Therefore, the Japanese invented the "balloon funeral", which can be regarded as a low - cost version of space burial. They fill the ashes into a balloon and release it into the sky. It is reported that this balloon will rise to a height of about 50 kilometers above the ground in about three hours and explode under the influence of air pressure, and the ashes will then return to nature.
In addition to the universe and the sky, the ocean and trees have also become destinations for funerals, giving rise to sea burials and tree burials, which are also occasionally seen in China.
Actually, the new demands and concepts have changed not only the form of funerals but also the entire process. In Japan, one of the reasons for the high funeral costs is the chanting of scriptures in temples. The robot Pepper developed by SoftBank was ingeniously programmed to replace real monks to conduct a memorial service for the deceased. Due to the super - aging society, some elderly people with limited mobility cannot attend funerals. A Japanese company also proposed the "mobile funeral", setting up the mourning hall on a vehicle so that people who have difficulty attending funerals can pay their respects when the hearse arrives.
This change directly addresses the high premiums of traditional funerals. The "appearance fee" of Pepper is about 50,000 yen; the price of a mobile funeral starts from 130,000 yen; the cost of a balloon funeral is 240,000 yen per person; even the high - end space burial is cheaper than expected: about 450,000 - 500,000 yen (about 28,000 - 30,000 RMB).
In the trend of increasingly simplified funerals, these seemingly strange forms may become a new choice in the future.
Will young people bring about a "revolution" in death?
The simplification of funerals is a development trend in the funeral industry in recent years. According to the latest "2025 China Funeral Industry Development Report" released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the rate of simplified funerals in China has increased from 27% in 2020 to 58% at the beginning of 2025, more than doubling in five years.
Similarly, Japan, where funerals are more elaborate, is also moving towards simplicity. Especially after the pandemic, small - scale funerals attended only by family members are becoming more and more acceptable.
In the trend of simplified funerals, new farewell forms such as "mobile funerals", "balloon funerals", and "space funerals", although they sound incredible, undoubtedly cater to this change. Moreover, compared with the burden of traditional funerals, their cost - effectiveness advantages are very obvious. Of course, this does not mean that these new forms can be popularized. However, it cannot be ignored that the thinking and ideas of the new generation of young people about death and funerals have changed greatly compared with the previous generation, which may be an opportunity.
Taking Japan as an example, a funeral company in Japan recently released a survey report. The report shows that among 1,500 respondents aged between 20 and 70, 24.6% of them are engaged in "end - of - life planning". Among them, the participation rate of people aged 70 and above is the highest, reaching 48%. Surprisingly, young people in their twenties rank second with a participation rate of 26.8%.
The so - called "end - of - life planning" is to prepare for the end of life. Many young people choose to make a will in advance, which reflects their desire for "self - determination". In other words, in terms of funerals, the new generation of young people want to make their own decisions rather than follow social customs.
In particular, they pay more attention to the experience and emotional expression during their lifetime rather than the grandeur of the funeral after death.
This phenomenon is more popular and recognized in the United States. In the book "How to Die: An Investigation" by Shannon Lee Dawdy, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, it is mentioned that self - organized funerals are shining because of their charm. Behind this is the rapid change in the attitude of contemporary Americans towards death: people are not willing to give up this last chance to show their individuality, and finding the most suitable way to handle the body (either for themselves or their relatives and friends) has become their last wish.
Facing death and funerals directly and making plans in advance is also the idea of many young people in China. A survey jointly conducted by NetEase Data Reading and the research team of Professor Guo Lin from Huazhong University of Science and Technology involved 8,237 people. The survey shows that young people are very cautious about the funerals of their close relatives but are much more casual about their own funerals. In addition, they think that some traditional funeral customs have lost their original meaning and are just for show.
This concept directly affects their choices of funeral forms, processes, and related supplies. For example, regardless of gender, cost - effectiveness is ranked higher than feng shui when choosing a cemetery; for another example, land - saving and eco - friendly burial methods such as tree burials and flower burials are more likely to be recognized by them.
Although the changes of contemporary young people cannot shake the funeral customs that have evolved over thousands of years and have been passed down to the present, when they gradually get old and more and more people independently choose the funerals they want, the emerging funeral forms may be more popular than they are now.
Can a funeral without high premiums make money?
The continuously rising cemetery prices, opaque service items, and the influence of traditional ideas have always associated the funeral industry with huge profits.
For example, in the case of funeral supplies, the wholesale price of most urns on the market is a few hundred yuan or even lower, while the selling price can reach several thousand yuan or even tens of thousands of yuan.
The "industry rule" is basically to make a profit of ten or twenty times. A reporter learned that in a county - level funeral home, an urn made of golden nanmu carved with cranes was sold for 5,694 yuan, while a similar product online was sold for 700 yuan; another urn made of sandalwood inlaid with colored stones was sold for 2,990 yuan, while the same product online was sold for 300 yuan.
As the "first stock in the funeral industry", Fushouyuan has maintained a gross profit margin of over 80% since 2019, and the price of tombs has been rising year by year.
Compared with traditional funerals, the premium space for new forms such as space burials is much smaller. Can this support the survival and development of companies?
Taking space burial as an example, one of the main reasons why the "Peregrine" mission attracted attention last year was its commercial nature. This mission also aimed to cooperate with American companies to transport commercial goods to the moon, and the most eye - catching part was undoubtedly the world's first commercial space funeral.
As one of the leading companies, Celestis in the United States has been committed to providing space burial services, and its service items have multiple price levels. For example, a sub - orbital flight costs about $3,000, an Earth - orbiting flight costs $5,000, and the most expensive one is a deep - space orbit "burial", which costs about $13,000. The relatively flexible services and pricing make Celestis more likely to achieve commercial operation. It is worth mentioning that the company has frequent cooperation with SpaceX of Elon Musk. The greatest success of SpaceX in recent years is to reduce the launch cost, which provides more possibilities for space burial and even the entire space economy.
Data shows that during the space shuttle era, the launch cost to space was about $65,000 per kilogram. Now, SpaceX's Transporter service (also known as the "carpooling" flight) costs $6,000 per kilogram, less than one - tenth of the original cost.
One day in the future, when going to space becomes an ordinary thing, space burial may really become more popular.
Different from space burial, eco - friendly burials such as sea burials and tree burials are almost easy to implement and are more acceptable to the public. The latest data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs shows that in 2024, the proportion of eco - friendly burials in China has risen to 3.2%, an increase of 0.5 percentage points compared with 2.7% in 2023. Specifically, sea burials have become one of the most popular eco - friendly burial methods. In 2024, Shanghai held more than 50 sea burial activities, and nearly 3,000 deceased people participated in sea burials, a 25% increase compared with 2023.
However, the increasing number of people choosing eco - friendly burials does not create much commercial benefit. For example, most people usually choose the sea burial activities organized by the government. Even if there are some private sea burial service agencies, they are not trusted by consumers because of their high fees and non - compliance.
It can be seen that new forms with high technical thresholds or those derived from technology, although having a very small number of current audiences, have more potential than other forms without technical support. In the future, with the breakthrough and development of more new technologies, more diverse, novel, and expected funeral forms and products may also emerge.
At that time, the traditional funeral industry supported by high premiums will have to change.