I’m not a scientist (that may explain why I can never find a petri dish when I need one!) and I’m no statitician, but the graph below tells me that we’re going to see a lot more deaths in the coming years.

This is a graphical representation of the number of children born after 1933. 

BT Hathaway of the Funeral Words blog, details his own calcuations in an abstract for a larger article on the coming wave of baby boomer deaths.  BT estimates that the annual death rate with hit 3.3 million by 2020.  That’s a 32% increase over today’s number!

Here’s how I see today’s market:  We’re serving a whole mess of WWII generation Americans.  The majority of these folks, born in the 1910’s and 1920’s, will be dead in the next few years.  Those from the 30’s and early 40’s are following them.

But the real wave comes when those from the mid-40’s and on start following nature’s course.  And while it may look like a steady rise on the graph, you have to remember that over 418,000 Americans (most of them born in the teens and twenties) died in WWII combat, which means they aren’t dying now.  While that has affected the current death rate, the fact that the Baby Boomer generation hasn’t experienced that kind of “culling” makes that rise become a pretty big bump!

Of course, not all Baby Boomers are going to choose traditional burial services.  Which means those who offer the specialized memorialization services that Boomers prefer are in a unique opportunity for growth.