Historical background of funeral funding

Since the 19th century, the financial support for funerals has evolved. Today, the question of creating a "social security for death" is back in the spotlight. What happens to our bodies after our death? In societies where death is becoming increasingly invisible, how have our rituals evolved? Tomorrow, what will cemeteries look like? Will burial or cremation be replaced by other methods? How will the digital age transform our funeral practices?

Focus on funeral costs

To answer these questions and many others, we offer a series of six articles on the theme "The body after death," written by experts and illustrated by illustrator Vito. This fifth episode focuses on the cost of funerals. Based on a sociohistorical analysis of the funeral industry, it reveals that the issue of the cost of funerals, initially considered a matter of social justice and redistribution through the funeral service system, has changed in nature over time.

Evolution of the funeral industry

In the 19th century, in France, the revenues generated by the most expensive funerals were used to fund those of the most disadvantaged. The funeral industry has transformed since the 1990s, with the end of the municipal monopoly and the opening to competition. In recent years, a new reconfiguration is underway, and the question of the cost of funerals and their collective funding is back in the debate.

Funeral costs in France

Funerals are expensive: an average of 4,000 euros in 2026. In France, their cost is regularly denounced, and consumer association surveys fuel the idea of an abusive market. However, despite this recurring media coverage, public policies have never truly sought to regulate the level of prices.

The nature of the funeral market

This paradox invites us to shift our perspective. Because the funeral industry does not constitute a market like any other: it intervenes in a moment of high vulnerability and mobilizes moral values. It constitutes what is called a "contested market", whose functioning is regulated by public regulatory tools that arbitrate between economic logic and symbolic requirements. But first, we must understand what this regulation is based on.

Historical regulation of funerals

Since the French Revolution, the issue of funerals has become a political issue, particularly through the problem of burying the poorest. The care of the deceased has gradually moved out of the purely religious domain to become a public responsibility. At the end of the 18th century, an original regulatory system was put in place. It is based on a simple principle: organizing the funeral market in a way that guarantees access for all to funerals. To do this, services are structured into different price classes, allowing the wealthiest families to organize more opulent funerals. This is the beginning of the "pompe," that is, the ceremonial opulence accompanying funerals.

Institutional framework of funeral services

This regulation is not based on a single actor, but on an institutional architecture. Funeral operators concretely organize the funerals for the entire population. Religious fabrications still regulate part of the rituals and practices. Municipalities manage cemeteries and gradually become central in the organization of the service. Finally, the State plays a regulatory role by structuring the rules of the sector and enabling redistribution mechanisms.

Economic and political function of funeral differences

But far from being purely symbolic, these differences in treatment have an essential economic and political function. The revenues generated by the most expensive funerals serve to fund those of the most disadvantaged. The funerals of the 20% richest thus allow to cover those of the 80% poorest.

The paradox of equality through inequality

This system is based on an assumed paradox: inequality is encouraged in the name of equality. The "pompe" becomes a redistribution tool. Commodification is not rejected, but regulated and used to serve a social justice objective. In this context, the price of funerals is not a public problem in itself. On the contrary, it is a public action lever, allowing everyone to have access to dignified funerals. The central question is not that of cost, but that of equality before death.

Stabilization of funeral organization

During the 20th century, the organization of funerals stabilizes around a durable institutional framework. The 1905 law consecrates the funeral service as a public municipal service, affirming the principle of collective care for the dead and, in this respect, a form of equality for all before the funeral service.

Municipal role in funeral services

In this framework, the external service of funeral services is the responsibility of the municipalities, which ensure the responsibility while widely delegating the exercise to specialized operators, in particular the General Funeral Services (PFG). This system, based on a public monopoly in its principles, but largely delegated in its implementation, structures the sector for nearly a century. It allows to regulate funeral practices, homogenize their organization and limit the most visible forms of competition.

Challenge to the funeral system

This model is deeply challenged in the 1990s. The 1993 law or Sueur law, ends the municipal monopoly and opens the sector to competition. Funeral operators become actors of a market, competing to capture a clientele.

Shift in public policy focus

With this liberalization, the problem of price does not disappear, but it changes in nature. While the media and consumer associations denounce funerals as "too expensive," this framing does not impose itself in public policies.

Emergence of transparency as a policy focus

Since the end of the 1980s, another diagnosis has emerged: that of an opaque market, in which families, weakened by grief, do not have the necessary information to compare offers. This imbalance between professionals and users is thus requalified: it is no longer thought of as economic, but as informational.

Implementation of transparency measures

This shift is decisive: it structures the entire public policies for thirty years. Rather than regulating prices, the State seeks to organize the transparency of the market.

Measures to enhance market transparency

Several devices are gradually put in place. In 1999, it became mandatory to provide documentation accessible to families and to display general information on services. In 2004 and 2008, funeral contracts are regulated, information requirements are strengthened, and standard quotes are put in place, allowing families to compare services between operators.

Public policy objectives

These instruments pursue the same objective: giving families the possibility to use competition by making prices readable and comparable. In other words, public action does not aim to lower prices, but to improve the conditions in which they are presented. The proper functioning of the market is supposed to produce, by itself, a form of price regulation.

Origins of the transparency framing

This framing of transparency did not emerge spontaneously. It is the product of political work carried out by certain actors, in specific arenas. It is first carried by institutional and professional actors in the funeral sector, as well as by certain political figures long committed to these issues, such as Senator Jean-Pierre Sueur. For these actors, making transparency the core of the problem presents a decisive advantage: it allows correcting market imbalances without challenging its functioning or directly intervening on prices.

Political arenas and decision-making

This framing is mainly imposed in discreet and specialized political arenas where public policies are actually made. In these relatively closed spaces, the actors best equipped with institutional resources and expertise have a decisive advantage in defining the terms of the problem.

Media versus political arenas

On the contrary, the competitive framing centered on price levels, promoted notably by consumer associations, remains largely confined to media arenas. While it contributes to publicizing the issue and denouncing abusive practices, it struggles to translate into binding devices.

Acceptability of the transparency framing

Transparency thus emerges not only because it is based on a shared diagnosis - the vulnerability of families facing professionals - but also because it constitutes an acceptable compromise for the dominant actors in the sector.

Advantages of the transparency approach

It allows regulating the market without challenging its foundations. It is this combination, of political work by institutional actors and differentiated access to decision-making arenas and compatibility with market functioning, that explains why, for more than thirty years, public policies have focused on transparency rather than on price fixing.

Emergence of a new proposal

However, this framing is not without controversy: in recent years, actors promoting the idea of a "social security for death" have tried to bring the issue of funeral costs and social justice back to the center, opening the way to a possible redefinition of the problem.

Legal foundations of social security

In France, the ordinances of October 4, 1945 established at the national level the collective coverage of individual risks, with the implementation of the general regime in 1946, which concretized the Social Security. Article 3 then provided for the management of the risks of illness, maternity, and death by the primary insurance funds. Although several solidarity devices were created, gradually covering a number of these "risks" (illness, family, work accidents, retirement), none were implemented concerning the rights related to death. This gap was filled by the private insurance sector.

Proposal for a social security for death

Founded in 2021, and inspired by the work of sociologist and economist Bernard Friot - with whom it also collaborates - the Collective for a Social Security for Death develops a discourse around the possibility of extending Social Security to protect individuals from birth to death, covering the funeral costs of each person. Since, in the end, it is the living who pay.

Three pillars of the proposal

This proposal for a Social Security for Death is divided into three axes: for families: automatic reimbursement of funeral-related costs for all deaths on the territory and the establishment of a bereavement leave (a period of leave during which 100% of the salary is maintained); for professionals: the regulation of companies under certain criteria and a salary linked to the qualification of agents directly paid by Social Security; for governance: access to funeral colleges for families and professionals in order to jointly make decisions concerning the funeral sector and its evolution.

Funding mechanism

To finance these new rights, the proponents of the initiative propose financing through a contribution of 0.27% of gross salary, which would allow covering the 2.5 billion euros of annual funeral costs in France (an average of 3,000 euros per death).

Political support for the initiative

This idea of social security for death has found, over the months, support within different arenas of legitimacy. In addition to some media coverage, the LFI deputy Hadrien Clouet submitted, on October 28, 2025, a proposal for a law aimed at establishing a "funeral social security."

Alternative framing of the issue

This proposal has the merit of offering an alternative framing to that of price transparency. Reconnecting with the principle of social justice inherited from the revolutionary period, it allows to raise the question of price but also the question of who should bear the responsibility of covering this universal risk that is death: the individual or the community?

Limitations of the proposal

However, it presents an important limitation. It appears partly deaf to the history of the funeral sector, marked by an ancient and enduring involvement of private actors.

Institutional complexity of the funeral sector

Far from an initial public service that was later privatized, the funeral sector has been built in a close relationship between public authorities and private operators, the former having long delegated the concrete organization of funerals.

Challenges of demarketization

In this context, the perspective of demarketization of death requires not only new funding instruments, but also a profound reconfiguration of ancient institutional balances, which contributes to explaining the difficulties of this framing to impose itself.

Continuity versus transformation

This difficulty is particularly due to its deeply transformative nature. Where the framing of transparency is inscribed in the continuity of the market, that of Social Security for Death implies a reconfiguration of the relationships between the State, the market, and solidarity. This results in a strong asymmetry between the existing framings. The framing of transparency, compatible with the existing order, has been durably imposed in public action.

Institutional challenges to the new proposal

The framing of social justice, on the other hand, is supported by less institutionalized actors such as consumer associations, and still depends on their ability to transform a market critique into political instruments.

Opportunities for political change

Nevertheless, the departure of Jean-Pierre Sueur, a major architect of price transparency, opens new horizons for other politicians who would like to seize the issues related to funerals.

Shifting the debate

This reconfiguration constitutes an opportunity to shift the debates related to funerals from a purely technical reference framework to a more political one: the question of the cost of funerals and their collective coverage, largely eluded by the framing of transparency, is now back in the spotlight.